The only remaining neighbor is New Mexico, where patients who have the means to travel can receive care under some of the country’s most liberal regulations. But New Mexico’s clinics have limited capacity: In 2019, the state’s providers performed about 3,800 abortions, compared to more than 55,000 in Texas. For many of those unable to secure an appointment, the next closest option is Colorado, a state with no gestational age limits, waiting periods, or other controls.

But if the person seeking an abortion is under the age of 18, she may run into a problem there that she wouldn’t face in New Mexico. Colorado has a parental notification law, whereby a provider must inform a minor’s parent or guardian before performing the procedure. Many teenagers choose to involve their parents regardless of the law, but not all may feel comfortable or safe doing so. In such a situation, a teen can obtain a waiver known as a judicial bypass by relaying to a judge why it’s in her best interest not to involve her parents. Under this process, a youth who’s wary of confiding in her own family instead has to divulge details of her pregnancy in court to someone she’s never met.

“No matter what, you have to establish the fact of the pregnancy and the fact you don’t want it, and that means, at age 15, telling a weird old man judge about your sex life,” Kiki Council, a Colorado attorney who represents minors in judicial bypass proceedings pro bono, told The Intercept. A teenager doesn’t want to go on a stand and explain how “I wasn’t using condoms one time, and the consequences of that, just so my parent doesn’t find out, my parent who I know will kick me out or abuse me or harm me in some way.”

When news emerged that Roe v. Wade would be overturned, many noted that states with fewer abortion restrictions like Colorado would become safe havens for those around the country looking to exercise their decadeslong right to choose. But several liberal states have parental notification or consent laws, including Delaware, Maryland, Michigan, and Minnesota. Most states across the country — 37 — require some form of adult involvement.

These laws function as extra barriers, if not deterrents, for teenagers seeking abortion that states do not force upon people over 18 years old. Minors already face disadvantages by nature of their age: They don’t necessarily have the money to pay for an abortion, may be unable to drive to a clinic, or can’t miss school without an administrator calling their parents.

Put another way, state laws make it so that a child is more likely to endure a forced pregnancy than an adult. And yet minors may not have fully developed bodies to carry pregnancies safely, or the economic or psychological capacity to parent once a baby arrives.

State laws make it so that a child is more likely to endure a forced pregnancy than an adult.

Texas exemplifies the unique challenges minors are poised to face when Roe falls. “Youth often have irregular periods, or they might find out they’re pregnant and not know who to talk to right away, so even if they find out before six weeks, it might take them time to find a clinic or to find a trusted adult to talk with,” Rosann Mariappuram, executive director of Jane’s Due Process, a nonprofit that helps minors navigate Texas’s parental consent laws, told The Intercept. By that point, they may have missed the window of opportunity.

Once Roe is overturned, 26 states are certain or likely to ban abortion, according to the Guttmacher Institute. What’s more, the Supreme Court decision that mandated states provide minors with an option to waive parental involvement laws could be rescinded if Roe topples. The 1973 milestone case did not establish a right to abortion for minors — that came a few years later with Belotti v. Baird. The court determined that states like Maryland, which at the time required parental permission for abortion on the basis that minors are supposedly incompetent, must guarantee a bypass option.

A major question is whether the more liberal state governments with parental involvement laws, in trying to make their jurisdictions safe places for people seeking abortion around the country, will try to repeal them. But parental involvement is one of the most controversial issues surrounding abortion access today.

“Historically, every single time there’s been any sort of ballot initiative to restrict abortion rights, it has failed,” Council said of Colorado. “The only, only ballot initiative restricting abortion access that has passed in Colorado in its entire history … is parental involvement.”

In fact, when Democratic Gov. Jared Polis signed the Reproductive Health Equity Act in April to protect the right to an abortion, he included his own statement clarifying that the law did not affect Colorado’s parental notification requirement. This was never on the table, Council said, but it was still the No. 1 issue legislators fixated on. “‘This is about parental rights’ — that was the hammer that they kept banging on — like, ‘This is about me as a parent, knowing what’s going on with my child.’” A spokesperson for Polis did not reply to a request for comment on whether he supports parental notification laws.

In Michigan, where Democrat Gretchen Whitmer holds the governor’s seat but Republicans control the state legislature, minors have a harder time accessing abortion because they need their parents’ permission. An initiative called Reproductive Freedom for All is underway to get the more than 425,000 signatures needed to hold a ballot vote safeguarding abortion access, as the state is expected to see an influx of Midwesterners seeking care. It would include a legal framework to ensure that minors can get an abortion without involving parents, Merissa Kovach, legislative director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, told The Intercept.

But Michigan’s anti-abortion community is rallying against it. In an interview, Christen Pollo, spokesperson for Citizens to Support MI Women and Children, said that consent laws protect parents’ rights and ensure they can provide emotional support to their kids. And there are dangers that come with rescinding them, she argued. “One concern is that parental consent ensures that those who would abuse minor girls cannot then erase the evidence of their crimes in the nearest abortion clinic. … If a parent doesn’t even know that an abortion has been performed on their child, they don’t know what to look out for warning signs that that surgery may have been botched.”

Council believes that conservatives are trying to create “a chilling effect” by enforcing parental involvement laws. Many of her clients, she said, assume that because they can’t get abortions without notifying their parents, they can’t obtain birth control without letting them know either. “That is not true in Colorado, and I’m telling you right now that 99 percent of my clients could have prevented their abortion by getting birth control without parental consent, and they didn’t know that they could do that.”

Some conservative states, like Florida, have ramped up parental involvement requirements. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a law mandating consent in 2020. And at the federal level, Republicans have introduced bills to require parental notification nationwide. Sen. Mike Braun, R-Ind., introduced such a measure last year; it has 13 co-sponsors.

Illinois stands out as the only state in the country to enact a repeal of a parental involvement law, which went into effect June 1. The change was made possible by Democrats holding supermajorities in both chambers of the state legislature and the governor’s office.

Illinois stands out as the only state in the country to enact a repeal of a parental involvement law.

Still, it wasn’t easy. In anticipation of Roe being overturned, Illinois has worked to expand access to abortion, but the parental notification repeal wasn’t viable until recently. Even legislators relatively supportive of abortion rights were uncomfortable with the idea of making it easier for pregnant teenagers to obtain a safe abortion.

“I think the reflexive position is, parents should know when their child is facing an unwanted pregnancy and that they would want them to go to them for help, and of course we want that for anybody who’s in that situation,” Rep. Anna Moeller, who sponsored the repeal in Illinois’s General Assembly, told The Intercept. “Unfortunately, there are young people out there who don’t have that, and so it takes a longer conversation to explain that.”

She added that critics often complain about the erosion of parental rights, a grievance that has greater salience in today’s political climate as conservatives are galvanizing a culture war over parents’ involvement in their children’s classrooms.

As a result of the parental notification repeal and other reforms, Illinois is now one of the safest places for pregnant people seeking abortion care across the country. “The timing of it is really incredible because now Illinois is becoming a haven for people from all over the South and Midwest who need abortion,” Mariappuram, of Jane’s Due Process, said. “But it’s also going to be a haven for youth.”

The post Teenagers Already Face Extra Barriers to Abortion Care. It’s About to Get Worse. appeared first on The Intercept.

In February 2019, the Pentagon’s inspector general revealed that contractor TransDigm Group overcharged the military by at least $16 million — with margins up to 4,451 percent — for various aircraft parts over a two-year period. A second investigation released in December 2021 showed that the same company cheated the government out of another $21 million by pricing items at up to 3,850 percent more than the reasonable cost.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Rep. John Garamendi, D-Calif., will introduce companion legislation Thursday to leverage Congress’s oversight powers and rein in contractors’ price gouging, The Intercept has learned. The Stop Price Gouging the Military Act is timed to coincide with talks on the annual defense policy bill, which is currently undergoing markup in the Armed Services committees. Both Warren and Garamendi are committee members.

Warren and Garamendi’s legislation is long overdue: The recurrence of price gouging was already well known for years before the 2019 report. In May 2011, a Defense Department inspector general audit found that aerospace giant Boeing made about $13 million in excess profits off helicopter spare parts that it sold to the Army. But the more recent scandal unleashed new demands to crack down.

TransDigm built its empire using an unsavory business model to buy up smaller contractors that had monopolies on the supplies they provided to the military, guaranteeing the larger company’s ability to magnify returns. What’s more, TransDigm was able to reap its gains while complying with the weak laws Congress enacted at the behest of corporate interests, wherein a company can get away with hiding cost data from the government during contract negotiations. The revelation was an indictment of lawmakers’ duties to safeguard the government’s wallet.

In January, Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, convened a hearing to probe TransDigm’s profiteering, insisting that “Congress must act to empower contracting officers when they are negotiating with greedy contractors like TransDigm.” She released a “discussion draft” of planned legislation to force companies to submit uncertified pricing information if the government requests it.

Maloney has yet to introduce a final bill, however. This year, she faces a tough reelection in a member-on-member primary against fellow New York Rep. Jerry Nadler — in the wake of redistricting, the two members now share a district home to many Wall Street executives who are likely to resist any reform. Without legislation from Maloney, Warren and Garamendi’s proposal is likely Congress’s best shot to improve the law.

Nelly Decker, a spokesperson for the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, told The Intercept that Maloney plans to introduce her bill soon. “We expect the bill to be even more comprehensive than the discussion draft in addressing loopholes and abuses under current law, including the Truth In Negotiations Act and the exceptions for commercial items,” Decker wrote in a statement.

“For far too long, military contractors have been price gouging the Pentagon to make fatter profits, and American taxpayers shouldn’t have to foot the bill,” Warren told The Intercept in an emailed statement Thursday. “The end result is a military budget that is way too large. We need some basic rules on the road to prevent military contractors from price gouging.”

The problem is especially relevant now, Warren has argued, as corporations are likely exploiting anticipated inflation growth to unfairly raise their prices. Lawmakers and defense officials are simultaneously using the decreasing value of the dollar to demand an ever-increasing military budget.

“There’s no question that inflation is raising costs across the country, but we’ve also seen big companies taking advantage of inflation to jack up prices and to pad their profit margins,” she said at an April 7 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. “That is a particular problem in industries with lots of consolidation. The defense industry, which had 51 major companies competing for defense contracts 30 years ago, today has five. That is concentration. Price gouging by defense contractors has been a big problem for a long time.”

The industry that provides spare aircraft parts has a steep lack of competition: For many of TransDigm’s deals with the Defense Department, it was the only bidder. The new Stop Price Gouging the Military Act would require a company to share pricing data with the government if it is the sole supplier to submit a proposal on a contract.

Currently, under what’s known as the Truth in Negotiations Act, companies only have to disclose costs during negotiations if the expected value of the contract is more than $2 million. In TransDigm’s case, many of its deals were valued at less than $750,000 — the previous threshold for disclosure until Congress raised it to $2 million in the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act.

As contractors have lobbied for less oversight, Congress “has opened the door,” making it difficult for government contract officers to access necessary pricing data, Scott Amey, general counsel at the Project on Government Oversight, or POGO, told The Intercept. To illustrate the dynamic, he posed: “Would you buy a car without a sticker price on it?”

Defense suppliers also take advantage of lax aspects of the law by claiming that their items are “commercial” goods, allowing them to avoid or delay sharing costs with the government under policies intended to enhance Pentagon relations with the private sector.

“Companies routinely say, ‘It’s a commercial item, and therefore I don’t have to disclose.’”

“Turns out that there is a major hole in the acquisition contracting laws that a company does not have to disclose its costs if the item is commercial,” Garamendi told The Intercept. “There is no definition for commercial that makes any sense, and so companies routinely say, ‘It’s a commercial item, and therefore I don’t have to disclose.’”

The new bill aims to strengthen the meaning to ensure that contractors that exclusively sell their goods to the Defense Department can’t bypass sharing cost data. The provision is based on a proposal that the Pentagon made in 2012 but that was shot down in Congress. In the years since, the government has instead made it easier for companies to avoid pricing accountability when selling items to the military.

While the Stop Price Gouging the Military Act takes steps to address excess profits, it is not a complete fix. Earlier this year, POGO — which has long called on Congress to better regulate defense contractors — identified a list of problems with Maloney’s draft bill, calling the approach “Contract Pricing ‘Whack-a-Mole.’” Warren and Garamendi’s legislation resolves some, but not all, of the oversights the watchdog group identified.

POGO noted that the government often doesn’t require contractors to issue refunds, even though the Truth in Negotiations Act offers that opportunity. Further, the government doesn’t have the authority to suspend vendors from business deals if they do not comply with price-sharing requirements.

Rather than compelling this authority, Warren and Garamendi’s bill seeks to protect the government’s interests in other ways, such as by linking payment with performance and mandating that contractors reveal changes in their costs, gross margins, and pricing strategies to the Defense Department — similar to disclosures made by publicly traded companies.

“We wanted to offer a ‘carrot’ with the proposed legislative pilot that would tie payments to performance,” Garamendi’s office said in an email to The Intercept. “We thought that these provisions, along with the commercial item definition changes, would be comprehensive and had a chance of being passed.”

Update: June 10, 2022
This story has been updated to include a statement from a spokesperson for the House Committee on Oversight and Reform.

The post Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. John Garamendi Launch Plan to Stop Defense Contractor Price Gouging appeared first on The Intercept.

Next week, the House is set to hold a final vote on a popular bipartisan measure to ease pressure on the clogged global supply chains and seaports that are contributing to higher prices. The Ocean Shipping Reform Act will crack down on shipping companies currently exploiting their market power to raise fees, deny transport for exporters, and turn record profits in the process.

Reps. John Garamendi, D-Calif., and Dusty Johnson, R-S.D., have been working with Sens. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and John Thune, R-S.D., for months to reconcile the different approaches to reform the legislators introduced in their respective chambers. With an agreement finally in place, the impending vote tees the bill up to go to the White House for President Joe Biden’s signature, Garamendi, who first sponsored the House version, told The Intercept.

Neither piece of legislation goes all the way to overturn the antitrust immunity that has emboldened shipping companies, nor does either bring the hammer down on the consolidated agriculture industry that’s hoping to reduce its shipping costs. But Garamendi’s bill is stronger, and it has already overwhelmingly passed the chamber multiple times over the past year, both as a stand-alone and as an amendment to larger pieces of legislation. Klobuchar and Thune’s measure, a watered-down version that’s more tolerable for the shipping industry, passed the Senate unanimously in March. It was ultimately the latter measure that prevailed in reconciliation discussions and will arrive on the House floor next week.

Speaking to The Intercept, Garamendi downplayed the differences between the two. “We worked with Sen. Klobuchar from the very moment she decided she wanted to work on this issue … to fashion a Senate bill that was as robust and informative of the power that the FMC [Federal Maritime Commission] needed to have,” he said.

The main distinction is that the House version outright forbids shipping companies from refusing to transport agricultural exports overseas, while the Senate version hands off regulatory decisions to the Federal Maritime Commission. Carriers have notoriously turned down farmers and producers, leaving American ports empty-handed in order to pick up more profitable Chinese products. The World Shipping Council, the industry’s primary trade group, has criticized both measures but posted on its website that the Senate version “provides regulators enough authority to get the final rules right.”

Garamendi said he doesn’t expect the Federal Maritime Commission to be lenient. “The Klobuchar bill gives the FMC the power and the authority and the responsibility to write those regulations, and also, in the debate of the bill — that is, the processing and the floor debate — it will be clear that the purpose is that there be a reciprocal trade program in place,” he said. “We take imports, and they take our exports.”

The measure’s advocates also have the support of Biden, who used his State of the Union address earlier this year to announce a “crackdown” on ocean carriers “overcharging American businesses and consumers.” In February, his administration facilitated an agreement between the Federal Maritime Commission and Justice Department to enforce legal protections against the shipping cartels.

When the bill passed the Senate in March, Klobuchar touted its ability to tackle inflation and profiteering by shipping companies.

“Congestion at ports and increased shipping costs pose unique challenges for U.S. exporters, who have seen the price of shipping containers increase four-fold in just two years, raising costs for consumers and hurting our businesses,” she said in a press release. “Meanwhile, ocean carriers that are mostly foreign-owned have reported record profits. This legislation will help American exporters get their goods to market in a timely manner for a fair price.”

Despite this progress, neither Garamendi’s nor Klobuchar’s bill addresses a major cause of the market consolidation that’s enabling shipping companies to extract such exorbitant profits: exemption from anti-monopoly prosecution. By reining in global shipping, their measures also serve to benefit Big Agriculture, which is itself highly concentrated — not to mention environmentally destructive.

Much of the carrier industry’s economic power dates back to the 1998 Ocean Shipping Reform Act, which ironically shares a title with Garamendi and Klobuchar’s legislation. The Clinton-era bill allowed shipping companies to negotiate confidential deals with their customers, an about-face from the federal government’s decades-old policy to regulate carriers as public utilities. That policy was part of an arrangement whereby the companies were guaranteed immunity from antitrust prosecutions, which the 1998 measure kept in place. Three global shipping alliances now control 80 percent of the market.

Biden has called on Congress to address the antitrust immunity, though the Ocean Shipping Reform Act of today doesn’t touch it. Garamendi said he does believe that the exemption should be repealed but that it has to be done “carefully.” As such, there will be a rewrite, he said, of legislation introduced in March by Rep. Jim Costa, D-Calif., called the Ocean Shipping Antitrust Enforcement Act, to remove the waiver.

“This is a strong bill that will rein in the abusive practices we have seen from these shipping companies and we look forward to this legislation being signed into law,” said Klobuchar spokesperson Jane Meyer in a statement to The Intercept.

“Senator Klobuchar also is working with Representative Garamendi on additional shipping legislation as well as building support for a bill with Senator Booker to allow third parties like exporters to pursue legal action against shipping companies,” Meyer added, pointing to the senator’s Ocean Shipping Competition Reform Act. The legislation would allow third parties to wage legal challenges against ocean carriers for anticompetitive practices, but it would not repeal the antitrust exemption.

“The ocean shipping companies need to be aware that their day is coming.”

“The ocean shipping companies need to be aware that their day is coming, that their ability to manipulate the market — to purposefully, for their own economic benefit, for their profitability, to really screw American exporters — is over, and that I’m not backing away from this issue,” Garamendi added.

The California Democrat also said he’s committed to confronting the concentrated agricultural sector that’s been advocating for his bill to rein in the shipping industry. The meatpacking industry, for example, only has four major companies, like Tyson Foods, which is publicly supporting the new Ocean Shipping Reform Act.

“Ma’am, I’m a rancher,” said Garamendi, “and ranchers have been screwed repeatedly, decade after decade, by the middleman all the way to the retailers, and consolidation is the mechanism that has made it worse and worse over the years.”

He said it’s essential to fund the antitrust division of the Justice Department to help the small farmers who’ve been disadvantaged. “All the mechanisms are in place to deal with this. The question is the willingness to do so, and thankfully, we have a president that has spoken publicly about this multiple times.”

Biden brought up the problem in his State of the Union earlier this year. “Small businesses and family farmers and ranchers, I need not tell some of my Republican friends from those states, guess what, you’ve got four basic meatpacking facilities,” he said. “That’s it. You play with them or you don’t get to play at all, and you pay a hell of a lot more.”

Update: June 9, 2022
This story has been updated to include a statement from a spokesperson for Amy Klobuchar.

The post Congress Chooses Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s Shipping Cartel Bill Over Stronger House Version appeared first on The Intercept.

During the Trump administration, some Democrats, joined by a handful of Republicans, fought to end the U.S. bomb sales, intelligence support, and warplane refueling that made the Saudi intervention possible. But with a Riyadh-friendly president in the White House, their efforts never had a plausible chance of actually forcing the kingdom to withdraw. Democrats at the time didn’t bear responsibility for managing relations with a major weapons customer and oil producer that helped keep gas prices low at home. In early 2019, when majorities in both the House of Representatives and Senate for the first time in history invoked the 1973 War Powers Resolution to end U.S. involvement, Saudi Arabia could rely on former President Donald Trump’s veto.

So the war dragged on. President Joe Biden adjusted U.S. policy when he entered office by demanding an end to “offensive” support, but this didn’t have a material impact for Yemenis trapped by the blockade and Saudi air raids supporting it. In November, the United Nations estimated that 377,000 Yemenis would be dead by the end of 2021, 70 percent of whom would be children, many as a result of starvation and disease. According to the World Food Programme, more than 17 million Yemenis are battling food insecurity, and that figure is expected to rise to 19 million, or nearly one-third of the population, by December 2022. Two months ago, the U.N. brokered a cease-fire between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis that gave the population some respite, but it’s scheduled to end this week. Numerous aid groups are calling for an extension.

With the deadline looming, Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., co-founder of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, introduced a new resolution on May 31 invoking the 1973 War Powers Resolution to demand that Biden end U.S. military participation in the Yemen war. According to a press release from the CPC, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., will introduce a companion resolution when the Senate is back in session.

BREAKING: A bipartisan group of nearly 50 members of Congress just introduced legislation to invoke constitutional war powers to end unauthorized United States military involvement in Saudi Arabia’s brutal war in Yemen.

— Progressive Caucus (@USProgressives) June 1, 2022

“It’s particularly timely now because the truce between the Saudi-led forces and the Houthi-led forces expires on the 2nd of June and we don’t know exactly what will occur — it could be renewed — and we’re hoping that this will be a little prod toward renewal,” DeFazio told The Intercept in an interview.

“It’s essentially a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia unfortunately being carried out in Yemen and leading to hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths in Yemen and a huge humanitarian and ongoing humanitarian crisis,” he added. “This cease-fire has given some temporary relief, and I would hope it would continue.”

Forty-one Democrats and Republicans have signed on as co-sponsors, including CPC Chair Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., and Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., who introduced an earlier version in 2019. DeFazio also secured the support of more moderate Democratic leaders, like House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and House Rules Committee Chair Jim McGovern, D-Mass., whose panel will have to shuffle the resolution through to a floor vote. There are five Republican co-sponsors: Reps. Nancy Mace, R-S.C.; Thomas Massie, R-Ky.; Ken Buck, R-Colo.; Matt Gaetz, R-Fla.; and Andy Biggs, R-Ariz.

And the resolution has the endorsement of more than 100 organizations, including the Friends Committee on National Legislation, Demand Progress, and Just Foreign Policy, which are urging members of Congress this week to support it. “This is more essential than ever to maintain momentum for the fragile two-month truce and to prevent backsliding by blocking U.S. support for any renewed hostilities,” their letter, shared with The Intercept, says.

“Congress has a historic opportunity to end crucial U.S. engagement in the Saudi-UAE-led coalition’s deadly and inhumane war against Yemen, and reclaim their Constitutional jurisdiction over war,” Cavan Kharrazian, foreign policy campaigner at Demand Progress, wrote in a statement.

While proponents now have more of a Saudi skeptic in the White House than during their previous attempt at invoking the War Powers Resolution three years ago, passing the resolution again today may be a heavier political lift. U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia are at a crossroads: After initially promising to isolate the crown prince, Biden is now trying to curry favor with him.

In 2019, invigorated Democrats rode on their newfound control of the House to challenge the Trump administration, whose unapologetic allegiance to Saudi Arabia infuriated members of both parties. Trump had come to Crown Prince Mohammed’s defense after the murder and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in October 2018, just a few months after Saudi Arabia bombed a school bus in Yemen, killing at least 26 children. In November 2018, the White House relented somewhat by agreeing to no longer refuel Saudi coalition warplanes — Riyadh said it did not need U.S. support anyway — but Washington still supplied weapons, logistical support, and intelligence that allowed the war to continue.

Biden looked to make a change, pledging on the presidential campaign trail to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” and removing the Houthis from the State Department’s terrorist list upon entering the White House.

“This war has to end,” Biden said in his first foreign policy speech as president, in February 2021. “And to underscore our commitment, we are ending all American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen, including relevant arms sales.” The White House put a halt on hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of bomb sales but has still enabled U.S. maintenance of Saudi warplanes conducting airstrikes in Yemen. Biden also did not demand an immediate end to port blockades.

Although the White House allowed Saudi Arabia’s war to continue, Riyadh has strong-armed Washington by refusing to increase oil production, driving gas prices in the U.S. to record highs, with frustrated voters set to cast ballots in this year’s midterm elections. Facing low approval ratings at home, in part a result of higher energy costs, the White House is now trying to rekindle the relationship and even discussing an extension of Trump’s Abraham Accords to Saudi Arabia. Passage of a new resolution to end U.S. military involvement in the Yemen war may upset those efforts.

And some Democrats’ positions have softened over the years. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., once one of the Senate’s strongest advocates for ceasing U.S. participation, voted in favor of a $650 million missile sale to Saudi Arabia in December. The State Department claimed that the weapon was “defensive.” And House Armed Services Committee Chair Adam Smith, D-Wash., an original co-sponsor of the 2019 resolution invoking the War Powers Resolution, is not an original co-sponsor now. Smith told The Intercept last month that he was undecided on whether to back it, wanting to review the final language and speak with the White House first. “I think the Biden administration is really committed to putting pressure on all sides,” he said.

Some lawmakers may hesitate because this year’s bill goes much further to cease U.S. military support than the 2019 version. Then, the bill narrowly focused on ending midair refueling of Saudi warplanes and included an amendment, offered by Buck, the Republican representative from Colorado, clarifying that intelligence sharing may continue. The new resolution would forbid logistical and maintenance support for warplanes bombing Houthi targets, coordination with Saudi-led military forces fighting the Houthis, and intelligence sharing. The expanded bill has Buck’s support, but it has lost many original co-sponsors; in 2019, the resolution had about 70 original co-sponsors in the House, including House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., who is not on the list today.

Hassan El-Tayyab, legislative director for Middle East policy at the Friends Committee on National Legislation, acknowledged the challenges ahead. “FCNL and our allies, on and off the Hill, are ready for a more difficult political fight on the Yemen War Powers Resolution this time around. In 2019, Democrats were eager to push back against President Trump. Now, many are hoping President Biden normalizes relations with Saudi Arabia to lower energy costs,” he told The Intercept.

“As Biden is preparing to head to the region to potentially formalize a security arrangement with Saudi Arabia, this War Powers Resolution sends a strong signal from Congress that any agreement with the kingdom needs to include ending war in Yemen,” he added. “By reasserting its Article I war authority, Congress can help extend the temporary Yemen truce into a lasting peace settlement and finally bring this devastating humanitarian crisis to an end.”

The post Congress Launches a New Bipartisan Effort to End the War in Yemen appeared first on The Intercept.

“The American people overwhelmingly support commonsense gun legislation: universal background checks, closing loopholes, and restricting the sale of military-style assault weapons,” she said in a statement to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on May 25. “In the Senate I will be a leader on this issue and will support efforts to end the filibuster in order to pass meaningful gun legislation.”

“I will fight with everything in me to bring an end to this violence,” she added on Twitter.

But while Busch Valentine spreads the message that she’s a champion for reform, her family estate was set to host a fundraiser for the most powerful gun lobbying organization in the country. Grant’s Farm, a multimillion-dollar former plantation that she owns and operates with her siblings, was scheduled to host the event for the National Rifle Association in September, according to the website for Friends of NRA, the lobby’s fundraising arm. Single tickets were listed for $75; $5,500 bought a table for eight and one specialty NRA engraved pistol. Attendees could also purchase raffle tickets to earn a chance at winning more firearms.

Following publication of this story, Busch Valentine tweeted that she approached the Grant’s Farm board. “Today it came to my attention that the NRA planned to hold an event at Grant’s Farm,” she said. “Upon learning this, I did just what I will do in the Senate and persuaded the Board to cancel the event. Tonight, I am glad to share they agreed.” Busch Valentine also said she “made a personal contribution to @MomsDemand, that exceeds the rental fees the NRA is paying to Grant’s Farm for the event.” Her spokesperson declined to specify the rental fee amount and how much she donated to the gun safety organization.

Today it came to my attention that the NRA planned to hold an event at Grant's Farm. Upon learning this, I did just what I will do in the Senate and persuaded the Board to cancel the event. Tonight, I am glad to share they agreed.

— Trudy Busch Valentine (@buschvalentine) June 1, 2022

The Busch family, of the multibillion-dollar Anheuser-Busch beer fortune, has helped line the NRA’s pockets for years. A 2018 invitation-only fundraiser at Grant’s Farm billed it as an “exclusive venue” and siphoned more than $43,000 to the organization, according to a post on the NRA Foundation website. Members of the Busch family were in attendance, though the post doesn’t say which ones. “It is exciting to attend because people get to experience the Anheuser-Busch estate, and not many people can say they’ve done that,” said Tim Besancenez, who worked on the event.

And in 2007, the NRA’s lobbying arm hosted its first annual dinner and auction at Grant’s Farm, where 500 guests had the opportunity to bid on a safari in Tanzania and various firearms.

“Thanks to the generosity of Anheuser-Busch, the inaugural event was a huge success, raising nearly $300,000 to support [the NRA Institute for Legislative Action’s] legislative, legal, and political efforts,” a post on the NRA website says. At the time, the Busch family trust owned the estate and leased it to Anheuser-Busch, then led by the Senate candidate’s nephew, August Busch IV, a prolific Democratic Party donor. The Senate candidate and some of her siblings later bought the property in 2017 and took over operations from the beer company in November 2021.

The NRA has stood by the use of AR-15s, insisting they “are the most commonly used rifles in marksmanship competitions, training, and home defense.” Its CEO, Wayne LaPierre, said at the organization’s convention last week that the NRA was being targeted by government opponents. Repudiating the criticism the lobby received in the wake of the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre that killed 20 children and six adults, LaPierre spread the oft-cited mantra, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” After multiple on-site armed guards discredited that argument and failed to stop the Uvalde shooter, the association was unapologetic.

Grant’s Farm President Doug Stagner told The Intercept earlier on Tuesday that the estate doesn’t comment on private events, and emails to Friends of NRA and Busch Valentine’s campaign went unanswered.

Busch Valentine grew up on Grant’s Farm, which has been in her family since the early 20th century. During the 1800s, it was part of a plantation called White Haven owned by President Ulysses Grant and the family of his wife, Julia Dent, who used slave labor to build on the land. Local historian Amanda Clark said that “records show between 30 and 90 enslaved people living on White Haven depending on the decade,” the New York Post reported earlier this month.

Despite its sordid history, Busch Valentine hasn’t shied away from the estate. In fact, she used Grant’s Farm to kick off her campaign: “For me, it all began on a farm,” Busch Valentine said in her launch video. She then scheduled a fundraiser at the estate in May to boost her campaign, seeking as much as $5,800 from donors.

As The Intercept previously reported, Busch Valentine was crowned queen of a whites-only elite ball in 1977 in St. Louis. Busch Valentine said in a statement: “I failed to fully grasp the situation. I should have known better, and I deeply regret and I apologize that my actions hurt others.”

Busch Valentine was an unexpected contender when she threw her hat in for the Democratic primary to succeed retiring Republican Sen. Roy Blunt. She has never run for public office before; prior to running for Senate, she held fundraisers for high-profile candidates, like one for 2016 presidential contender Hillary Clinton at Grant’s Farm.

In this year’s high-stakes midterm elections, which will determine whether President Joe Biden retains the Democratic majority in Congress he needs to implement his agenda, Busch Valentine faces multiple primary rivals. There is Lucas Kunce, a Marine veteran and antitrust advocate who’s similarly never held elected office but has managed to outraise his many Republican opponents with his populist economic messaging. Spencer Toder is also a political outsider who works in real estate and co-founded a medical equipment company; he’s running a progressive campaign focused on addressing the climate crisis.

Both Kunce and Toder have called for enacting more gun safety measures.

There are also a handful of Republicans competing to win the party’s nomination. The Senate seat is considered a safe GOP stronghold, though the front-runner’s scandalous past may be a liability that could present an opportunity for the Democratic nominee to flip it.

Leading the pack in the polls is disgraced former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens, who resigned in 2018 amid multiple criminal allegations, including that he sexually assaulted a woman he was having an extramarital affair with, which he denied. In March, his ex-wife, University of Texas professor Sheena Chestnut Greitens, accused him of abusing her and their two children — allegations that he claimed were part of a political plot to undermine him. Last week, her attorney said records showed that she did not coordinate with his enemies, though his counsel refuted that. Their custody battle continues.

Multiple Republicans, including the outgoing Blunt, who hasn’t endorsed a candidate to succeed him, have called on Greitens to back out of the race. The controversies surrounding Greitens have worried many conservatives, like talk show host Hugh Hewitt, that he will be “Todd Akin 2.0.” Akin, a Republican, famously lost Missouri’s 2012 Senate race to Democrat Claire McCaskill after he bizarrely told an interviewer asking about abortion: “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

Instead, many conservatives are rallying behind Rep. Vicky Hartzler or Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, including August Busch III, Trudy’s brother, who donated $250,000 to the Schmitt-linked PAC Save Missouri Values. Both candidates have connections to the NRA. Hartzler is endorsed by Secure Our Freedom Action Fund, which is led by Chris Cox, the NRA’s former political operations director, and Schmitt is backed by former NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch.

Update: May 31, 2022, 7:20 p.m.
The story has been updated to include a statement by Busch Valentine following publication.

Update: May 31, 2022, 9:55 p.m.
Following publication, Busch Valentine tweeted that the event at Grant’s Farm had been canceled. The headline and article have been updated.

The post NRA Planned to Hold Fundraiser at Family Estate of Missouri Democrat and Anheuser-Busch Heir Running for Senate appeared first on The Intercept.

Patel and Abdelhamid both entered the race from the left to challenge 30-year incumbent Reps. Carolyn Maloney and Jerrold Nadler, who were placed in the same district thanks to a new congressional map. Drawn by a special master after the courts rejected the New York legislature’s original map, it combines Nadler’s Upper West Side turf with Maloney’s Upper East Side base to create a newly formed 12th district, setting up the contest between the two venerated, Manhattan-based lawmakers. A recent poll from Emerson College found 31 percent of primary voters support Maloney, 22 percent want Nadler, 6 percent back Abdelhamid, and 4 percent plan to vote for Patel, with 36 percent undecided.

“Suraj has fought relentlessly for climate justice, indigenous rights, and speaking truth to corporate power and influence in our democracy and I am proud to endorse him for Congress,” Donziger said in a written statement to The Intercept. “Both Jerry Nadler and Carolyn Maloney are some of the biggest recipients of corporate PAC dollars in the country; their incrementalism and defense of big corporations have led us to the brink. 60 years is enough time in Congress to know that the 61st will be no different. It’s time for change.”

Donziger is renowned among progressive circles on the Upper West Side for his activism against Big Oil. In 2011, he won $9.5 billion for thousands of Indigenous Ecuadoreans and farmers in a high-profile class-action lawsuit against Chevron for contamination of their lands. The corporation sought to vilify him, winning verdicts that disbarred him and eventually placed him in prison for 45 days and under house arrest for more than two and a half years. On April 25, he was released early amid a public campaign from human rights activists.

Now Donziger is putting his weight behind Patel, a former Obama administration staffer and technology entrepreneur who characterizes himself as a “pragmatic progressive.” Patel supports a Green New Deal and Medicare for All but distinguishes himself from more left-wing Democrats by, for example, backing military assistance to Israel and touting his long-standing commitment to strong U.S. relations with the country. He was also criticized for 2012 Facebook posts sexualizing then 16-year-old Olympic gymnast McKayla Maroney, and accused of courting voters by catfishing users on dating apps during his 2018 campaign. His campaign at the time described the former as private jokes taken out of context and the latter as a new tactic to excite voters.

“Nearly all of the volunteers used their own dating app accounts but where someone felt like they didn’t want to use their own because of their own dating life, the organizers of the event told them they were welcome to use a stock photo but to be clear, every single profile clearly identified Suraj Patel for Congress on images,” Patel wrote in a statement to The Intercept. “As a Millenial running for office, my entire life has existed over social media and like so many young people I’ve made over 10,000 comments on Facebook.  Rep Maloney found one single completely out of context comment over a 15 year span between me and my girlfriend and ran an incredibly dishonest campaign to smear my character using it. The only people who would find that newsworthy might be the rightwing media that ran it.”

Abdelhamid, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, had positioned herself to Patel’s left. In addition to the Green New Deal and Medicare for All, her campaign emphasized the need for union protections and investments in the care economy. She deviates from Democratic Socialists of America by opposing the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement but says she wants to condition aid to Israel on the advancement of human rights.

The 2022 election is Patel’s third primary race against Maloney. In 2020, he came within 3 percentage points of beating her, surpassing other left-wing candidates like comedian Lauren Ashcraft and housing activist Peter Harrison. It was a significant improvement from Patel’s 19-point loss to the Democratic incumbent in 2018, and he’s looking to channel the momentum into a victory this year.

For Donziger, the primary for New York’s 12th district is personal. In September 2021, while under house arrest awaiting his prison sentence, the lawyer criticized Nadler, his representative, for failing to come to his defense. He pointed out to The Intercept that the lawmaker’s son works for Gibson, Dunn, & Crutcher LLP — Chevron’s law firm. (Nadler’s spokesperson said that his son was not involved in the case and the congressman does not comment on ongoing cases.)

Meanwhile, Patel spoke at a rally supporting Donziger outside his trial last year. And in 2012, he published a 40-page paper in the Tulane Environmental Law Journal on Donziger’s pursuit of justice for Indigenous Ecuadorians against Chevron. 

“While Jerry Nadler was silent, Suraj spoke up because he knew we were on the right side of the law and the right side of history,” Donziger said. “Civil liberties are at stake in my case and my Congressman has been completely silent while one of the biggest human rights crimes in the world happened in his district while I languished in house arrest.”

While Donziger will likely offer Patel a boost, other influential figures on the left had coalesced around Abdelhamid to give voters a well-resourced progressive fighter. The Google staffer, who was seeking to be New York’s first Muslim congresswoman, had the support of Justice Democrats, a political action committee aligned with the Bernie Sanders wing of the party that paved the way for fellow New York Democrats Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s and Jamaal Bowman’s victories. She also boasted endorsements from left-wing powerhouses like New York City Council Member Tiffany Cabán and former gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon.

While Abdelhamid outraised Patel in the first quarter of the race, Patel had more money in the bank. Public records show that during the first three months, Abdelhamid raised nearly $960,000 with $360,000 on hand, while Patel raised about $650,000 with $544,000 on hand.

With Abdelhamid out, Patel will still face a formidable resistance from the incumbents. Also in the first quarter, Nadler raised close to $920,000, including about $218,000 from groups like the American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education. Maloney surged ahead with nearly $2.3 million, including more than $820,00 from PACs by Pro-Israel America, UBS, and more.

Update: May 31, 2022, 12:45 p.m.
After this story was published, Rana Abdelhamid announced that she was suspending her campaign, citing the removal of Queens and Brooklyn communities from New York’s newly redrawn 12th congressional district.

Correction: June 6, 2022
This story previously stated that Rana Abdelhamid’s campaign had more cash on hand than Suraj Patel’s. It has been updated to clarify that while Abdelhamid outraised Patel in the first quarter, Patel had more cash on hand.

Update: June 6, 2022
This story has been updated to include an added statement from Suraj Patel.

The post Steven Donziger, Lawyer Who Fought Big Oil, Endorses Suraj Patel for Congress appeared first on The Intercept.

Running alongside presidential candidate Gustavo Petro, Márquez belongs to the first-ranked ticket now poised to bring Colombia its first democratically elected left-wing government. With a candidacy that threatens the right-wing status quo of current President Iván Duque Márquez, the two have faced repeated death threats.

On Monday, 90 political figures and entities from more than 20 countries released a letter condemning growing violence and persecution ahead of Colombia’s presidential elections, which begin on May 29. The Independent first reported their statement on Sunday.

Durante la conmemoración del #DiaDeLaAfrocolombianidad, quisieron intimidarme apuntándome con un láser desde un edificio cercano. ¡No nos callarán! Nuestra lucha es y siempre ha sido contra todos los tipos de violencia que pretenden sembrarnos miedo.
¡La paz vencerá! pic.twitter.com/1KIqIiD0jD

— Francia Márquez Mina (@FranciaMarquezM) May 22, 2022

“We, elected representatives and leaders from around the world, express our grave concern for the growing threat of violence, assassination, and intervention in Colombia’s presidential elections on 29 May,” they wrote. The signatories include U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich.; former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa; and numerous legislators from South America’s Mercosur Parliament and the European Parliament.

In a particularly egregious threat, Petro’s security team uncovered a plan by paramilitary group La Cordillera to murder him, forcing the candidate to cancel a tour of Colombia’s coffee region earlier this month. Petro has pledged to tackle the country’s 40 percent poverty rate and shift the economy away from dependence on fossil fuels. He’s a current senator and former member of the April 19th Movement, or M-19: a guerrilla organization active from 1970 to 1990 that sought to promote democracy using revolutionary tactics — most famously by taking Supreme Court judges hostage during a siege at the Palace of Justice in Bogotá, and stealing Simón Bolívar’s sword from the city’s Bolívar House museum. Petro participated in peace talks leading to the group’s demobilization.

Petro and Mina have both survived assassination attempts in the past and continue to face many death threats, including from the Black Eagles, a murky far-right group widely believed to be affiliated with narcotrafficking. These threats pose a risk to “their lives and their right to political expression just days before the first round vote,” the world leaders state.

“Political violence is not contained to the candidates,” the signatories warn. “As of writing, more than 50 social leaders — including trade unionists, Indigenous and Afro-Colombian representatives, peasant movement organizers, and environmentalists — have been murdered this year in an attempt to intimidate and eliminate Colombia’s popular movements.”

The victims include land defender Camilo Borou Bosachira Axducaracyara, labor activists Teófilo Manuel Acuña and Jorge Tafur, and community leader Hermán Naranjo Quintero, according to Justice for Colombia, a London-based group that seeks to promote solidarity between British and Irish trade unions and Colombian civil society.

And earlier this month, a narco-paramilitary group known as Gaitanista Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or Clan del Golfo, launched an “armed strike” that killed dozens of people and brought much of the country’s economy to a halt. The attack was retaliation for the Duque government’s extradition of group leader and drug trafficker Dairo Antonio Úsuga to the United States. The violence has “endangered the democratic process,” according to the letter.

The country’s democracy is also under threat as a result of efforts to oust elected officials from their positions, “raising concerns about the possibility of targeted lawfare,” they argue. Earlier this month, the Colombian government’s head prosecutor suspended Daniel Quintero Calle, the mayor of Medellín, after he tweeted a video pushing the gear lever of a car with the hashtag #ElCambioEnPrimera: “Change in First,” a popular slogan for the Petro-Márquez ticket. Colombian Inspector General Margarita Cabello, whose powers were expanded last year with Duque’s support, characterized the tweet as violating the country’s law banning public officials from participating in elections.

Petro — who ran for president in 2010 and again, against Duque, in 2018 — referred to the decision as a “coup d’état” motivated by Cabello’s allegiance to Federico Gutiérrez, the leading right-wing contender and Duque’s preferred candidate. In 2014, former inspector general Alejandro Ordóñez forced Petro to vacate his former position as the mayor of Bogotá, a move the U.S.-based Inter-American Commission on Human Rights later ruled had violated the region’s human rights charter. (Then-President Juan Manuel Santos nevertheless drove Petro out of office).

“Democracy is at risk,” Quintero tweeted after Cabello’s announcement. “They want to remove us from office to intervene in the presidential elections.”

“Together, these threats call for greater vigilance, scrutiny, and transparency in Colombia’s presidential elections,” the political figures wrote in Monday’s statement. “For decades, the people of Colombia have demanded peace and dignity. We write now in solidarity with their struggle for a free and peaceful democratic process.”

The post International Political Actors Condemn Mounting Violence in Colombia’s Presidential Election appeared first on The Intercept.

Take retired Air Force Lt. Gen. David Deptula, dean of the influential and General Atomics-funded Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, who penned an op-ed in Forbes advocating for the U.S. to give Ukraine Reapers in March, before Kyiv’s interest was publicly known. He blasted skeptics who voiced concern about offering Poland’s MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine, saying they’re “being cowed by Putin,” the Russian president.

In a phone call with The Intercept, Deptula reiterated his hawkish stance, arguing concern about conflict escalation “is being fed by the Russians through a very sophisticated information operations campaign to deter U.S. and NATO actions to assist the Ukrainians. Anything’s fair up to, but not including, the use of NATO forces in the conduct of hostile operations against the Russians.”

“Approve this, US Govt.,” Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., tweeted last month when the Washington Post reported that Ukraine’s ambassador to the U.S. met with General Atomics. Notorious for calling on the U.S. to enforce a dangerous no-fly zone over Ukraine, Kinzinger, along with Reps. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., and Chrissy Houlahan, D-Penn., also asked the Defense Department to report on how long it would take to train a Ukrainian pilot to fly the MQ-9. This week, senior fellows from the General Atomics-funded Hudson Institute wrote an op-ed in The Dispatch endorsing sending Ukraine Reapers as well. And General Atomics sends lobbyists to Washington specifically to influence the strict export policy that the U.S. has enforced to limit the global proliferation of such dangerous drones.

The White House has shown an increased willingness to give Ukraine weapons as the war in Ukraine has dragged on and U.S. aims shift toward seeing a “weakened” Russia. Initially, it was only willing to give shoulder-fired missiles; backpack-sized drones called Switchblades strapped with grenades; and encrypted communications equipment. More recently, the administration has greenlighted heavy artillery weapons, armored personnel carriers, and longer-flying experimental drones called Phoenix Ghosts. Last week, President Joe Biden signed into law the first “lend-lease” program to accelerate military shipments since World War II, and this week, Democrats are trying to fast-track $40 billion to supply Ukraine with more arms and replenish the U.S.’s depleted stockpiles, at the expense of new Covid-19 relief spending.

Along the way, Kyiv and the U.S. defense industry have had a strong ally in the American media, which is constantly asking the administration why it’s not getting more involved. After the Washington Post reported on Ukraine’s discussions with General Atomics, Politico beckoned: “Ukraine wants armed drones. Is the U.S. ready to deliver?”

“It’s not every day that the United States approves the sale or transfer of armed drones to a foreign country — but Ukraine is hoping the Biden administration will heed the call of soldiers on the ground to do just that,” the story led.

If the government approves a deal, Ukraine would be one of only a few countries to receive Gray Eagles or Reapers. Unlike fighter jets such as the F-16, the U.S. hasn’t widely provided them because of an international agreement known as the Missile Technology Control Regime. Aiming to curb the spread of weapons of mass destruction, the nonbinding regime calls on exporters to use a “strong presumption of denial” standard when considering giving advanced drones like the MQ-9 to other countries.

However, following pressure from the defense industry, former President Donald Trump eased that burden in July 2020 as part of a broader effort to expand U.S. arms sales globally, opening the door for the State Department to authorize Reaper exports to the United Arab Emirates and Taiwan. The policy shift drew strong rebuke from members of Congress, who may now be tested with a transfer to Ukraine.

Describing the Trump administration’s policy shift, Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., now chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said at the time, “This reckless decision once again makes it more likely that we will export some of our most deadly weaponry to human rights abusers around the world.” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., quickly teamed up with Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and other Democratic and Republican senators on legislation to ban exports of advanced drones, except to NATO members and a handful of other close allies. Ukraine was not on the list.

Asked their positions on giving Ukraine the Reaper now, both Menendez and Murphy said they’d have to review the proposed deal first before taking a position.

“I have to look at that. I have to see what their ability to use it [is]. I have to see how they use it,” Menendez told The Intercept.

General Atomics has already tried to clear up such questions. A company spokesperson told Forbes last month that motivated Ukrainian forces could undergo an expedited training period much shorter than the U.S. Air Force’s mandatory one-year lessons for drone pilots.

Paul, the Senate’s strongest critic of U.S. military assistance to Ukraine, warned about the risk of NATO getting drawn in further. “I do understand that there is a danger, and I haven’t fully concluded where I am on this, but you know, there is always the danger of escalation,” he said in an interview. (He added that he would be more comfortable if Ukraine paid for the weapons, but since MQ-9s cost tens of millions of dollars each, that is not likely.)

Bill Hartung, senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, warned in an email to The Intercept that giving Ukraine armed Reapers would be a major step up from what the U.S. has already supplied. “In my view, Ukraine has the right to defend itself, and some weapons supplies are warranted on that basis,” Hartung wrote. “But supplying large, long-range drones would be a significant escalation in the types of systems supplied to Ukraine, and as such shouldn’t go forward without significant scrutiny by Congress.”

Members of Congress do have the authority to block an export, like when Paul introduced a motion to halt a missile sale to Saudi Arabia in November, which was voted down in the Senate. He distinguished that case from Ukraine, though. “Most of the battles that I’ve chosen on selling arms have been to countries where there’s a lot of people … who’ve talked about their human rights abuses,” Paul said, noting he hasn’t objected to deals with NATO allies. “Ukraine’s not NATO and I’m not a supporter of them being in NATO, but at the same time, I am sympathetic to their plight.”

Meanwhile, Ukrainian forces have reportedly used internationally banned cluster munitions during the current war, and have a sizable neo-Nazi faction. Ukraine is also home to one of the largest arms trafficking markets in Europe, meaning weapons sent to Kyiv could end up with unintended militias or in other conflicts abroad.

It’s not clear whether the State Department has made any formal moves toward a possible Reaper deal. Reporter Michael Peck, writing about the meeting between Ukraine and General Atomics, speculated in Forbes: “[I]t is unlikely that such talks between Ukraine and a U.S. defense contractor would have happened without a green light from the Biden administration.” A State Department official who requested anonymity said the agency cannot comment on possible arms transfers before formal notification to Congress. General Atomics spokesperson C. Mark Brinkley told The Intercept Tuesday that the company remains in close contact with Ukraine and U.S. government representatives.

Hartung warned that giving Reapers to Ukraine in service of weakening Russia, as stated by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, can especially be dangerous.

“A policy of trying to weaken Russia risks pushing Putin into a corner and increasing the risks of escalation of the conflict to a direct U.S.-Russia war, with all the risks that entails, including the possibility of the use of nuclear weapons,” he said.

The post Military-Industrial Complex Is Itching to Send “Hunter-Killer” Drones to Ukraine appeared first on The Intercept.

Allegations of American atrocities during the so-called global war on terror have hardly evoked the same desperate calls for justice. The U.S. government has long met international demands for accountability with hostility. Starting late last year, the New York Times’s explosive investigations into civilian deaths in botched U.S. airstrikes in the Middle East arrived just weeks before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began. No requests for a war crimes tribunal were heard from Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., now the Senate’s biggest champion for an International Criminal Court, or ICC, investigation into Russia. And a new reform initiative the Defense Department launched in the exposé’s wake is delayed with minimal pushback from Congress.

The loss of life in Ukraine has been horrific. The United Nations announced Tuesday that it can confirm Russia’s war has killed more than 3,300 civilians since the invasion began February 24, though it expects that the actual figure is thousands higher. For reference, the U.S. war on Iraq killed nearly 8,000 civilians in the first three months following the March 2003 invasion, the Iraq Body Count estimates.

“Like most of the civilized world, I have been absolutely horrified by the … assaults against Ukraine on residential buildings, schools, synagogues and churches, and even critical infrastructure including nuclear power plants,” Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., chair of Congress’s Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, said during a hearing last week. Citing in particular the discovery of hundreds of bodies, some of whom appeared to be summarily executed, in the Ukrainian city of Bucha, Cardin argued: “The scale and pattern of these crimes clearly suggests to me that war crimes are being committed by the Russian military on the orders of Vladimir Putin. Mr. Putin must be held accountable for his unprovoked bloody attacks on the Ukrainian people.”

A number of countries and international entities have begun investigations to prepare for potential war crime prosecutions. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice Beth Van Schaack told the commission that the U.S. is supporting inquiries by the United Nations, ICC, and any national court around the world that may have jurisdiction, including the Ukrainian government, which a State Department team is already advising. Graham told The Intercept last week that he’s talking to the White House about sending $15 million to aid the Ukrainian prosecutor’s efforts.

“We are committed to robust law enforcement and diplomatic cooperation to ensure that there is no safe haven for those who might commit atrocities,” Van Schaack said during the commission’s hearing.

The U.S. is also reviewing the extent of its own legal authorities. In the House of Representatives, Rep. Tom Malinowski, D-N.J., sought to allow the White House to seize Russian oligarchs’ assets and give them away to Ukraine, but the American Civil Liberties Union helped kill it as a result of due process concerns. In the Senate, Sens. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., and Graham are exploring changes to the law to enable domestic prosecutions of noncitizens who may have committed war crimes overseas.

Graham has also been cheering on the ICC’s abilities to investigate war crimes after Republicans have spent years deriding the court. (The Trump administration sanctioned ICC personnel investigating alleged U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan and at CIA sites overseas.) In a change of attitude, the Senate unanimously passed a resolution led by Graham earlier this year pledging support for any ICC inquiry into allegations of Russian atrocities.

But the U.S. has imposed limitations on the assistance it can provide the ICC, which it is not party to, in an attempt to evade accountability. The 2002 American Service-Members’ Protection Act, for example, prevents the U.S. from sharing intelligence to support ICC inquiries in order to safeguard U.S. troops from prosecution. But there’s some wiggle room. The Justice Department determined over a decade ago, as the New York Times reported, that the U.S. can provide help for “particular cases.” And Graham told The Intercept that he’s looking to change current regulations, but only “for the limited purpose of helping ICC with information we have about Russian activity in Ukraine.”

Meanwhile, after the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe hearing, Cardin told The Intercept: “I’m not too concerned physically where the trials take place. I want to make sure there’s accountability.” Asked if the U.S. needs to modify laws to allow for intelligence sharing with the ICC, Cardin said he asked if there’s anything more to do, and he’s been told they have all the authority they need but “if they need anything further we’ll be glad to give it to them.”

While the U.S. races to hold Russia to account, very few American lawmakers have turned the scrutiny inward. A notable exception is Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., who led several of her progressive colleagues last month calling for the U.S. to join the ICC and repeal the 2002 law that restricts U.S. assistance to the court’s investigations. But otherwise, the United States has largely neglected to look at itself in the mirror.

In its groundbreaking series, the New York Times revealed earlier this year that the U.S. has killed thousands of civilians in botched airstrikes throughout the Middle East since 2015. In July 2016, the publication found, the U.S. intended to bomb Islamic State “staging areas” in northern Syria but actually massacred more than 120 villagers seeking shelter. In March 2019, U.S. jets struck and killed 70 people in the eastern Syrian town of Baghuz when the operators of separate American drones flying overhead knew them to be mostly women and children. Repeatedly, retroactive assessments by the Pentagon were downplayed and resulted in no disciplinary action, and the U.S. made fewer than 12 condolence payments to survivors.

Following these discoveries, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, a retired four-star Army general who commanded U.S. military operations in the Middle East from 2013 to 2016, called for reform. “We strive diligently to minimize the harm that armed conflict visits upon civilian populations, but we can and will improve upon our efforts to protect civilians,” Austin wrote in a January memo to Pentagon leadership. “We will revisit the ways in which we assess incidents that may have resulted in civilian harm, acknowledge the harm to civilians that resulted from such incidents, and incorporate lessons learned into the planning and execution of future combat operations and into our tactics, techniques, and procedures.”

In the January 27 memo, Austin called for an action plan within 90 days of issuance. But it’s not yet finished. During a House Armed Services Committee hearing in early April, Austin said the review was about 30 days in. Defense Department spokesman Lt. Col. César Santiago-Santini told The Intercept that the 90-day process remained ongoing. (Asked by Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., whether the Pentagon would take another look at cases of civilian harm that were dismissed, Austin also said during the hearing that “at this point, we don’t have an intent to relitigate cases from before.”)

Marking the original three-month deadline, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.; Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif.; and Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo. — who are members of the armed services committees — introduced two new bills in late April that would codify several of Austin’s directives into law. Asked what motivated her to propose these measures now, Warren told The Intercept: “The stories keep mounting up about civilian casualties, and the inability or outright refusal of the Department of Defense to make a careful accounting.” Referring to Austin’s memo, she added, “I want to see some results.”

In an email to The Intercept, Annie Shiel, a senior adviser at the Center for Civilians in Conflict who endorsed the new legislation, explained that having involvement from Congress can help guarantee the success of the Pentagon’s reforms. “And while it’s encouraging that civilian harm is being recognized as a high priority at the Department,” she said, “success will require sustained engagement not only from the [Defense Department], but also from Congress — to support the Secretary’s ongoing efforts, to hold the Department accountable for its commitments, and to fill critical remaining gaps.” (The bills will ensure a new center of excellence to advance civilian protection measures, for instance, will outlast the current administration.)

In the Senate, Warren’s bills have the support of Democratic Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois and Sens. Jeff Merkley, D-Ill., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. But otherwise, her efforts to keep pressure on the Pentagon weren’t top of mind for influential legislators. Sens. Jack Reed of Rhode Island and James Inhofe of Oklahoma, the most powerful Democrat and Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee respectively, told The Intercept last week that they hadn’t reviewed the proposals yet. They’ll play a pivotal role in determining whether the bills make their way into the annual defense policy bill, which would be the likeliest legislative vehicle to pass them into law.

In an opinion column for MSNBC last month, Middle East expert Trita Parsi, executive vice president at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, laid out a compelling argument for why many countries in the Global South have not joined the U.S.’s efforts to sanction Russia in response to its war on Ukraine. “Many of these states also see flagrant hypocrisy in framing the Ukraine war in terms of the survival of the rules-based order,” he wrote. “From their vantage point, no other country or bloc has undermined international law, norms or the rules-based order more than the U.S. and the West.”

The hypocrisy and excuses for the U.S.’s unwillingness to submit to a fraction of the scrutiny it’s now demanding of Russia were perhaps most blatant in a Washington Post op-ed last month by former Democratic Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut and George W. Bush administration attorney John Bellinger III.

“The United States can help the court in appropriate cases while still strongly opposing ICC investigations (including of U.S. personnel) that do not meet the court’s strict threshold requirements,” Dodd and Bellinger wrote. “The ICC was created to prosecute only the most serious international crimes that are not addressed by the nations that commit them, not to investigate every allegation of misconduct.”

Of course, the U.S. has already managed to dodge ICC inquiries. When the court’s chief prosecutor reopened an investigation into war crimes in Afghanistan last year, it dropped allegations against the U.S. and its allies, choosing to focus only on the Taliban and the Islamic State. Just a few weeks before, the U.S. ended its 20-year war in Afghanistan with a drone attack that the Defense Department initially called a “righteous strike” against the Islamic State. The Pentagon later acknowledged the attack hit and killed 10 civilians, including seven children.

The post U.S. Demands Russian War Crime Prosecution While Neglecting Its Own Accountability appeared first on The Intercept.

Majewski, of Port Clinton, Ohio, doubled down on his allegiance to Trump the following January, when he raised thousands of dollars to bring a group of people to Washington, D.C., to attend the “Stop the Steal” rally against certification of President Joe Biden’s election. (He told a local television station that he left before the attack on the Capitol began.) Eight months later, Majewski gave his lawn a new paint job — this time, a giant mural of Trump’s face. And he unveiled the new art under a new context: While he had rallied in January as a private Ohioan with no known political ambition, by September 2021 he had channeled his newfound recognition into a primary candidacy for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.

If Majewski mows his way through the GOP primary Tuesday, he’ll face off against Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio, producing an unusual realignment election. The MAGA movement portrays itself as economically populist and culturally conservative — which also happens to describe Kaptur, the longest-serving woman in the House and one of the most outspoken advocates of workers in her almost 40 years in Congress.

Unlike Black Lives Matter protest gun-toter Mark McCloskey — who similarly leveraged his sudden conservative fame to launch a Missouri Senate campaign that’s gone nowhere — Majewski is gaining traction. Late last month, Trump gave him a glowing endorsement at an Ohio rally: “He’s been carving the name Trump on his farm and those planes would pass over that farm. You know who I’m talking about. And he’s a great guy and he’s in there fighting for whatever the hell he’s fighting for. I don’t care. I love him, J.R. Majewski.”

“He’s a genius,” Trump added.

The former president is backing Majewski over experienced Republican competitors some of his party allies support. Theresa Gavarone, an Ohio state senator, was named a “woman to watch” by New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, the third-ranking Republican in the House. Craig Riedel, a state representative, boasts the endorsement of Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, the highest-ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee and a relentless Trump defender.

“Trump knows I’m a no bullshit guy. He knows I’m loyal to his efforts and sees the value of my energy background,” said Majewski, who presents himself as “a Senior Leader in the nuclear industry,” in a direct message on Twitter. (He told The Intercept he was a nuclear executive until recently but declined to specify for which company.) “My opponents are spineless they’ve proven that through their time in the legislature here in Ohio and they would rather kowtow to other Republicans than stand on the front lines.”

Whoever wins the GOP primary on Tuesday has a serious chance of heading to Congress. Ohio’s historically blue 9th Congressional District, which Kaptur has consistently won by at least 11 percentage points since her first election to the House in 1982, now leans slightly Republican thanks to redistricting by the state’s Republican legislators. Pollsters like the Cook Political Report and Inside Elections consider the race a toss-up. Ahead of the anticipated red wave this midterm season, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee added Kaptur to its list of front-line candidates.

Kaptur does currently have a significant monetary advantage, but that could change when Republican donors gather behind one candidate and the National Republican Congressional Committee throws in its resources. (The group already put the 9th District on its target list.) Federal Election Commission records show Kaptur has raised $974,000 this cycle and has nearly $1.4 million on hand. Among Republicans, Gavarone, Riedel, and Majewski have all raised less than $500,000 and have less than $100,000 on hand.

While redistricting drove many Democratic incumbents to retire or run for different seats, Kaptur is pressing on. “Joe Biden is the first president in my lifetime — and that’s one reason I’m running again, because I’m going to help Joe as much as I can — that sort of gets it,” she told NBC News in a January interview, referring to more economic populist values that animate the Midwest. At the time, Ohio legislators were finalizing her district’s new borders to favor the GOP. (The Ohio Supreme Court initially rejected the state’s new congressional map due to its overwhelming tilt; it has also tossed out maps for statewide office four times, an issue that remains unresolved.)

Despite Kaptur’s enthusiasm, Biden’s name hardly carries as much weight as Trump, who according to the New York Times, would’ve won the newly drawn 9th District by 3 points. And right-wing super PACs see her vulnerability. Historically, they haven’t bothered spending massive amounts of money to impact races against Kaptur; her district has been solidly blue throughout her nearly four decades in Congress. In a sign of new optimism, they’re all-in this year. Super PACs have spent nearly $1.4 million on independent advertising in the Republican primary — all during the month of April.

But the outside spending isn’t the classic story of political insiders rushing their resources to undermine a high-risk candidate in favor of a safe, establishment one. Drain the DC Swamp, a super PAC that backs far-right lawmakers like Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., has paid more than $210,000 to prop up Majewski’s campaign. The group is primarily funded by Colorado retiree Tatnall Hillman, whose fortune comes from the oil and gas industry.

In a sign of infighting within the more extreme, anti-establishment segment of the GOP, Drain the DC Swamp supports Jim Jordan but nevertheless has spent nearly $80,000 against his preferred candidate, Riedel (and the same amount against Gavarone too).

More traditional Republican megadonors, meanwhile, have gotten behind Gavarone. Winning for Women Action Fund, which aims to elect GOP women to Congress, endorsed Gavarone last month. Her race is one of only two in which the group is rolling out independent advertising; the other is Ohio’s Senate election, where it’s backing Jane Timken, former chair of the Ohio Republican Party.

But rather than targeting both Riedel and Majewski, Winning for Women Action Fund isn’t bothering wasting resources against the Trump-favored political outsider. Instead, it has spent nearly $480,000 solely against Riedel. It is bankrolled by a number of high-net financiers, including billionaire investment banker Warren Stephens, a prolific Arkansas-based right-wing donor who spent millions to oppose Trump’s candidacy in 2016. According to the massive ultra-wealthy tax document leak known as the Paradise Papers, Stephens also secretly co-owned a payday lender that was found to engage in predatory practices in a multimillion-dollar lawsuit brought by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Gavarone’s campaign is also getting outside support from a union-backed super PAC called Defending Main Street, which claims an “85%+ winning percentage”, according to its website. Its candidates “are committed to enacting common-sense, bipartisan legislation on kitchen-table issues such as health care, equal pay, childcare, education, clean water, and infrastructure,” the site says. Defending Main Street has spent nearly $200,000 to promote Gavarone’s candidacy.

And one dark-money group backed by secret donors — which appears linked to several other secretive PACs trying to influence Republican races nationwide — has made the Ohio GOP primary its target.

Northwest Ohio Freedom Fund has spent about $326,000 to oppose Gavarone — and no money on any other congressional race. According to FEC records, the fund is based in Alexandria, Virginia, and its treasurer, Dustin McIntyre, is affiliated with several other PACs. The filings list two email accounts, one of which bounced back a message from The Intercept, and another, affiliated with a firm called FEC Compliance Group, which did not respond to a request for comment.

Last month, the Michigan Campaign Finance Network, a nonprofit dedicated to exposing money in politics, reported that FEC Compliance Group is an adopted name for Ohio-based Clark Fork Group, LLC, a firm connected to political consultants Joel Riter and Tom Norris. Riter, a former aide to Republican Ohio Senate candidate Josh Mandel, and Norris are part of a dark-money network and have been called out in watchdog complaints to the FEC. Clark Fork Group did not reply to a request for comment.

As voters grapple with high gas prices and frustration with a perceived lack of progress from Democrats, super PACs are rushing massive sums to Republican primaries across the country — anticipating a common trend wherein first-term presidents’ parties often lose seats in Congress during the midterms.

In its own analysis of the upcoming Ohio race, the New York Times reported last week that Republicans may ultimately oust Kaptur thanks to shifting values in the 9th Congressional District. The incumbent’s friends in the labor movement, according to the story, have grown disillusioned with the environmentally conscious Democratic Party, and union membership has declined overall.

But it’s not just policy that determines election outcome. Money and personality are huge drivers of voter behavior, and there’s no shortage of either in this Ohio race.

The post Man Who Painted Trump’s Face on Lawn Could Be Headed to Congress appeared first on The Intercept.

Still, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle were not relishing a fight with a massive industry and were privately and publicly expressing serious concerns, leaving the outcome of the two votes in doubt. Given the popularity of the legislation, though — or more accurately, the unpopularity of Big Tech — Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin, D-Ill., calculated that opposition would wilt in the light of day. Forced to publicly choose, how many senators would side with Big Tech over the public?

Both bills passed the committee in landslides. In January, the American Innovation and Choice Online Act advanced in a 16-6 vote, with every Democrat and five Republicans — Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Ted Cruz of Texas, Josh Hawley of Missouri, and John Kennedy of Louisiana — backing it. Then a few weeks later in February, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed the Open App Markets Act in a 20-2 vote, with only Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Thom Tillis, R-N.C., opposing it.

Asked by The Intercept how he managed to move the first bill through committee despite the lack of firm commitments of support, Durbin said that opposition “melted” as Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., the bill’s sponsor, whipped the committee members ahead of the vote. “Sen. Klobuchar worked overtime on this bipartisan bill, and a lot of the opposition to it melted, melted away,” he said.

Neither piece of legislation is publicly supported by a majority of senators, having just 12 and 10 co-sponsors, respectively. But the Durbin strategy offers a clear path to passage: Put the bill on the floor, and dare senators to oppose it. “Sen. Schumer supports the Judiciary Committee passed legislation that promotes small businesses and innovation. He is working closely with Senator Klobuchar and other Democratic and Republican members to get the necessary votes to pass it in the Senate,” a Schumer spokesperson said in an email.

A floor vote would likely be a blowout for Big Tech; the companies’ best chance to stop the legislation is to keep it off the Senate floor, and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has told advocates of the bills that they won’t get a vote until they have commitments from 60 senators, as first reported by Politico Pro. Getting those commitments, with no need for a senator to go on record, is leagues harder than forcing them to take a position on the floor.

Both bills have Big Tech reeling. The American Innovation and Choice Online Act aims to prevent the largest online platforms like Google and Amazon from favoring their own products and services against their competitors. The Open App Markets Act aims to stop Apple and Google from granting preferential treatment to their own products in the App Store and Google Play, respectively.

Schumer has family ties to Big Tech. One of his daughters is a lobbyist for Amazon, and the other works at Facebook, the New York Post reported in January. Angelo Roefero, a spokesman for Schumer, denied the idea that his family connections would have any impact on the antitrust bills, telling the news outlet: “Sen. Schumer is championing these issues both legislatively and with his appointments to federal agencies. He will fight for action and success that delivers a fairer and more innovative playing field for all.”

Among Democrats on the Judiciary Committee, Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Alex Padilla — who represent California, home to many Big Tech headquarters — Delaware Sen. Chris Coons, and Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy all expressed concerns about at least one of the bills. None have co-sponsored the measures, but in a sign of what could be to come if Schumer moves them to the floor, they ultimately supported them in committee.

Big Tech firms and their proxies in Washington, D.C., have taken advantage of the waiting time to lobby against the bills. According to The Hill, the American Edge Project, an advocacy group backed by Facebook parent company Meta and lobbying groups funded by Amazon and Google, has launched a seven-figure advertising campaign against the American Innovation and Choice Online Act. A new video uploaded to YouTube on April 12 features retired Gen. Joseph Dunford, former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other former high-ranking national security officials warning about the need to “strengthen American technology” amid threats from Russia and China.

Update: April 19, 2022

The story and headline were updated with a comment from a spokesperson for Sen. Schumer.

The post Chuck Schumer “Working Closely With Senator Klobuchar” to Whip Votes for Antitrust Bills appeared first on The Intercept.

“Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo’s adamant and ongoing refusal to release her calendar records, a simple and routine task expected of federal officeholders, is one recent example of conduct that warrants full attention from the Senate Judiciary Committee given your ongoing concern over FOIA practice and administration,” the coalition of 14 watchdogs, including Public Citizen and Revolving Door Project, said in a letter obtained by The Intercept. The letter was sent on Monday to Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Ranking Member Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa. The Commerce Department has not replied to a request for comment from The Intercept.

Raimondo set off alarms with antitrust advocates when she criticized proposed EU regulations targeting Big Tech in December. Yelp, the News Media Alliance, and others raised concerns about her critiques of the proposals, called the Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act, and sought to meet with her. The watchdogs began publicly demanding Raimondo release her calendars to allay any concerns that technology giants had undue influence over her stance, but those appeals have gone unanswered, as have their FOIA requests. Meanwhile, other powerful officials, like Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, routinely release their calendar schedules.

The watchdogs are especially concerned that Raimondo’s criticism of the EU’s attempts to crack down on Big Tech diverge from the policy priorities of the Biden administration, which supports efforts to rein in technology giants and other concentrated markets. The president released an executive order in July to promote competition in the economy, arguing that the few dominant internet platforms gain monopoly profits. The Justice Department also endorsed a major Big Tech antitrust bill that aims to prevent discrimination against competitors that passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee in January and is similar to the EU proposals.

“While there is nothing nefarious per se about Raimondo holding differing positions from her colleagues, her resistance to transparency has fueled speculation that she is purposefully and illegally trying to shield her contact with representatives from Big Tech companies from public view,” the watchdogs wrote.

Raimondo’s opaqueness has also fueled critiques from Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. The senator sought information about Raimondo’s repudiation of the EU proposals but did not receive a reply for months. The secretary ultimately said she supports efforts to increase competition but the administration opposes “efforts that are specifically designed to target U.S.-based companies,” the Washington Post reported in March. Warren nevertheless chastised Raimondo, telling the publication: “It’s inexcusable that Secretary Raimondo does not take congressional oversight seriously and continues to avoid transparency around the Commerce Department’s lobbying on behalf of Big Tech companies overseas.”

The coalition warns that by not disclosing her calendars, she reminds the group of her predecessor in the Trump administration, Wilbur Ross, who notoriously had conflicts of interest in his stock holdings and met with Chevron and Boeing representatives, which his wife owned stakes in at the time.

“Raimondo’s refusal to accommodate basic requests for information about her conduct as a public servant harken back to the tenure of her predecessor, former Secretary Wilbur Ross,” the watchdogs wrote. “In an era marked by low public confidence in government, the actions of the Commerce Department only stand to further erode Americans’ trust in their elected officials.”

Meanwhile, Raimondo has already come under scrutiny from Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee due to concerns about foreign ties to her husband’s employer. According to a report from the Washington Free Beacon, the company, PathAI, has financial support from a venture capital firm that’s backed by the Chinese Communist Party.

The post Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo Won’t Disclose Whether She Met With Big Tech, Watchdogs Say appeared first on The Intercept.

The declaration gave arms control advocates hope that the president would adopt a no-first-use policy — meaning that the U.S. would commit to never initiating a nuclear conflict. Current policy allows the president to strike first in an extreme circumstance, like in response to a devastating chemical attack, which can lower the threshold for nuclear war to break out. But now, at a time when the world is closer to a nuclear exchange than ever, thanks to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s devastating war against Ukraine, Biden has gone back on his word.

On March 29, the White House released a short summary of Biden’s upcoming strategy on nuclear forces indicating his decision: “The United States would only consider the use of nuclear weapons in extreme circumstances to defend the vital interests of the United States or its allies and partners.”

This effectively makes the U.S. stance on nuclear employment indistinguishable from Russia’s. According to its military doctrine, Russia may use a nuclear weapon if it faces an “existential” threat — a fact of which Putin has reminded observers around the world in recent weeks as he pummels Ukraine.

Biden’s decision to keep U.S. policy so similar to Russia’s amounts to a missed opportunity to build an international coalition against nuclear conflict, disarmament advocates say.

Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., co-chair of the Nuclear Weapon and Arms Control Working Group, took to the Senate floor on March 31 to indict the policy: “Unfortunately, our American democracy and Russia’s autocracy do share one major thing in common: Both our systems give the United States and Russian presidents the godlike powers known as sole authority to end life on the planet as we know it by ordering a nuclear first strike.”

According to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported Biden’s decision to maintain first-strike authority on March 25, the president faced pressure from allies to renege on his campaign pledge. He met with European partners late last month amid apparent concerns that Russia may use a nuclear or chemical weapon as part of its war against Ukraine. (NBC reported last week that three U.S. officials admitted there is no evidence that Russia brought chemical weapons near Ukraine.)

Tom Collina, policy director at the nuclear arms control group Ploughshares Fund, argued that rolling back the strike authority could have benefited international efforts against Russia. “Putin is threatening the first use of nuclear weapons to hold Ukraine hostage and keep the US and NATO out,” he wrote to The Intercept. “This is nuclear blackmail, and its a dangerous precedent that we must oppose. Its therefore deeply disappointing that the Biden administration just missed a key opportunity to reject first use. Instead, Biden’s policy also allows first use and is essentially the same as Russia’s, and this undermines Biden’s ability to build international opposition to what Putin is doing.”

That may be the case for lawmakers of at least one ally. On April 1, dozens of members of the Progressive Caucus of Japan, a minority coalition to the left of the conservative Liberal Democratic Party fronted by Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, joined American lawmakers in the Congressional Progressive Caucus to call on Biden to commit to a no-first-use policy. “A U.S. declaration stating that it would never start a nuclear war, supported by Japan, would breathe new life into international efforts to reduce and eventually eliminate the danger of nuclear war,” the letter, led by CPC Chair Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., said. The lawmakers cited the importance of such a policy as tensions between the U.S. and China, also a nuclear power, continue to worsen. (China owns significantly fewer nuclear weapons than the U.S. or Russia, but the Defense Department says it’s engaging in a buildup.)

Other Democrats have remained quiet or indicated tacit support of the status quo. Republicans took advantage of a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing with the head of U.S. Strategic Command, Adm. Charles Richard, last month to defend the logic of first-strike authority. When Richard said that changes to declaratory policy would harm relationships with allies, the panel’s chair, Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., did not question the argument, and no other Democrats broached the subject.

Despite the dangers that nuclear weapons pose, Democrats are allowing their fear of appearing weak amid Russia’s war on Ukraine to triumph over meaningful reform that could make the world safer. “I’m certainly in favor of making it clear that the United States is not going to be the first to use nuclear weapons,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., told The Intercept. “I’d have to think a little bit more about whether this is the right time or what the mechanism would be to make that policy.”

He downplayed the idea, though, that the U.S.’s strike policy is indistinguishable from Russia’s: “Russia’s policy is whatever is in Vladimir Putin’s head at the moment.”

While maintaining first-strike authority, Biden’s nuclear policy is slated to roll back certain nuclear weapon programs started under the Trump administration. According to the Wall Street Journal, he’s planning to get rid of the B83 gravity bomb, the largest in the U.S. nuclear stockpile, which was on track for retirement until the previous White House decided to keep it around. Biden’s also planning to get rid of a nuclear-armed, sea-launched cruise missile that the Trump administration had greenlighted.

“If media reports are true, President Biden has missed an historic opportunity to reduce the role of existential nuclear weapons in U.S. military strategy.”

Biden has, however, reportedly decided to stick with the Trump administration’s plan to deploy the “low-yield” W76-2 warhead on nuclear submarines. This class of weapons has lower explosive power compared with the most destructive nuclear weapons, like intercontinental ballistic missiles, potentially lowering the threshold for nuclear war.

Russia notoriously has more low-yield nuclear weapons than the U.S., which has raised concerns about their potential use in the war against Ukraine, especially if Putin believes that he has no other way to defeat the resistance. Murphy called for the U.S. to take action to prevent their proliferation worldwide.

“I think it’s time for us to lead a global conversation around the proliferation of these smaller tactical nuclear weapons, because they will ultimately allow a madman to justify using it and believing they can ultimately get away with it,” he said.

In the meantime, Biden has foregone his primary chance to rally allies around the push for a no-first-use policy. “If media reports are true, President Biden has missed an historic opportunity to reduce the role of existential nuclear weapons in U.S. military strategy,” said Markey in a statement following the Wall Street Journal report. “Retaining a warfighting role for U.S. nuclear weapons is a triumph for the trillion-dollar defense industry, but it is a tragedy for everyone counting on the President to keep his campaign promise to make deterrence the sole purpose of nuclear weapons.”

The post Biden’s Nuclear Strike Policy Is the Same as Russia’s appeared first on The Intercept.

The 1977 ceremony marked a special anniversary for the Veiled Prophet Organization, a secret society of Missouri elites dedicated to maintaining white supremacy and unchecked corporate power. It was founded by former Confederate officers in the wake of the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 — an effort to forge a populist, multiracial working-class coalition to oppose the era’s robber barons — and began hosting the ball as its annual celebration after federal troops smashed the worker revolt. A hundred years later, the affair was less of a secret but no less controversial.

It would have been difficult for Busch — now Busch Valentine, and a new Democratic candidate for Senate from Missouri — to avoid learning about the controversy. At the time Busch won the title, Black and Jewish people weren’t allowed to join the organization; that wouldn’t come until 1979. In 1972, five years prior to Busch’s crowning, activist Gena Scott entered the ball and unmasked the “veiled prophet”; Scott’s car was later bombed, and her house was vandalized. One of the protesters in 1977 was arrested for using a “disabling chemical spray” at the affair the year prior. And at Busch’s crowning, “There were extensive and extraordinary security measures,” an article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch said.

“I believe in the importance of working together and healing divisions — and that starts with acknowledging my own past shortcomings,” Busch Valentine wrote in a statement to The Intercept. “I failed to fully grasp the situation. I should have known better, and I deeply regret and I apologize that my actions hurt others. My life and work are way beyond that, and as a candidate for Missouri’s next US Senator, I pledge to work tirelessly to be a force for progress in healing the racial divisions of our country.”

Busch returned at least two more times to the ball. The following year, she “promenaded the room and chatted with the man wearing the golden tunic and thick veils of the Prophet before she was escorted to her seat amid former queens,” according to a January 1979 article in the Post-Dispatch. And in 1990, after decades of protests from civil rights activists, she returned to be honored alongside other former queens. (The event still goes on today.)

The ball’s history exploded in the mainstream press last year, when it was revealed that Hollywood actor and Missouri native Ellie Kemper of the television show “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” was crowned queen in 1999. Kemper issued a lengthy apology, claiming not to have known of the organization’s sordid founding — though the Klan-like regalia, including Grand Wizard-looking costumes, should have been a tipoff.

On Monday, Busch Valentine announced a bid for Senate in the Democratic primary. Her late and unexpected campaign to succeed retiring Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., coincided with the exit from the race of former Democratic state Sen. Scott Sifton, who immediately endorsed her.

Sifton had received the support of many elected Democrats in Missouri, including state auditor Nicole Galloway, but struggled to raise money. Primary opponent and political outsider Lucas Kunce, a populist Marine veteran, had outraised him — along with the many Republicans in the race. With Busch Valentine, the Missouri Democratic Party will get a high-net donor and insider, one who hosted a fundraiser for presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016 at her family estate. Her brother August Busch III is also a prolific donor, giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to a contender in the Republican primary and her potential rival in the general election, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt.

The seat is generally considered a shoo-in for Republicans, though allegations against the GOP frontrunner, former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens, may create an opening for Democrats. Greitens resigned from the governorship in 2018 after facing accusations of sexual abuse and campaign finance violations. In a court filing last week, his ex-wife Sheena Greitens, a professor of public policy at the University of Texas at Austin, accused him of physically abusing her and one of their sons.

The Senate candidate has denied all the allegations and consistently depicted himself as the victim of a witch hunt like former President Donald Trump, a narrative that’s succeeded thus far with primary voters, who consistently rank him as their first choice. But many in the Republican Party establishment have concerns. In 2012, former Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill coasted to victory after her Republican opponent came under fire for bizarrely claiming there is such a thing as “legitimate rape” in response to a question about abortion. After last week’s allegations, Blunt, who hasn’t announced an endorsement, called on Greitens to drop out of the race. Meanwhile, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., has given his support to Rep. Vicky Hartzler, R-Mo., preparing her for an ascent to replace Greitens.

The post Missouri Democrats’ New Senate Candidate Was Crowned Queen of Whites-Only Ball appeared first on The Intercept.

As the Ukrainian resistance, fortified by NATO arms, continues to fend off a Russian takeover, Putin is growing more belligerent, and Washington appears increasingly fearful that he could use a nuclear weapon short of an existential threat. On Wednesday, the New York Times reported that in the early days of the invasion, the White House gathered a “Tiger Team” to come up with possible responses in case Putin decides to use biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons.

While the world draws closer to nuclear war than it has in decades, perhaps ever, Russia’s aggression in Ukraine has given lawmakers a unique opportunity to scrutinize the massive nuclear modernization effort currently underway in the U.S. — the largest since the Cold War. But last week, when Congress announced most of its appointees to a new commission designed to do just that, it was business as usual. A former senator-turned-defense contractor lobbyist and a senior executive for BP were among the picks. As these commissioners consider nuclear modernization efforts and the very role of arms control, they’ll have the ear of lawmakers and get access to information and statistics from the Defense Department, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and other government agencies.

“Russia’s unprovoked and senseless war in Ukraine has brought home the risks of nuclear escalation,” Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., co-chair of the Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control Working Group, wrote Tuesday in a statement to The Intercept. “This moment calls for restraint, not overkill. The 2009 Perry-Schlesinger Commission largely rubberstamped the nuclear weapons status quo. The purpose of the committee should be to yield saner nuclear policy, so it’s vital that any potential conflicts of interest are divulged before work begins.” (The 2009 commission marked the last time Congress launched such a review of U.S. nuclear weapons policy.)

Authorized by the annual defense bill signed into law in December, the new commission in theory will assess “the benefits and risks associated with the current strategic posture and nuclear weapons policies of the United States” and make recommendations to Congress, though it doesn’t have a mandate to dictate policy or budgets. It’s also not likely to seriously interrogate the U.S.’s current nuclear structure. The commission won’t have the funding to contract outside studies to substantiate its assessment, House Armed Services Committee spokesperson Caleb Randall-Bodman told The Intercept on Wednesday. The Biden-led Defense Department has already neglected an independent technical study of the current intercontinental ballistic missile system’s future viability, drawing the ire of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., in a hearing earlier this month.

“Over the past year, the Pentagon has repeatedly pushed out and obstructed efforts to have more rigorous debates and analysis to support [the Nuclear Posture Review],” Warren said, referring to a Pentagon-driven strategic document that the White House will soon release. She pointed directly to the overlooked assessment of the ICBM program, adding: “No matter what you believe about [nuclear] weapons, our nuclear policy should be developed by asking tough questions, not formulated in an echo chamber.”

Rather than soliciting independent, scientific analysis, the commission’s review will instead be entirely in the hands of its 12 members. To lead the group, the highest-ranking Democrats and Republicans on the House and Senate Armed Services committees each got two picks, and each party’s leader in the two chambers got one. So far, all except the choice of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., have been announced.

Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, selected two people with deep ties to the defense industry. Former Republican Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona has lobbied for Northrop Grumman, the main contractor for the new B-21 bomber and ICBM system, and Qualcomm, an information technology vendor for the Defense Department, lobbying records show. He’s also a standard hawk: While serving in the Senate in 2018, Kyl wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post advocating for the development of so-called low-yield nuclear weapons. Experts warn that these weapons reduce the threshold for nuclear use, and their proliferation in Russia — which has a larger, though still comparable, stockpile than the U.S. — has spread fears about an escalation in Ukraine.

Inhofe’s other pick, Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, is an executive at Westinghouse Electric Co., a government contractor working on nuclear energy projects. During the previous administration, she was appointed head of the Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration by former President Donald Trump.

The appointment of retired Gen. John Hyten, by Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Jack Reed, D-R.I., looms large over the commission. Hyten was the head of U.S. Strategic Command, which oversees the U.S. nuclear arsenal, and then vice chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff until November 2021. During this time, he was an outspoken advocate of maintaining the “nuclear triad” — the three-pronged layout of the U.S.’s nuclear force posture, consisting of land-based missiles (ICBMs), submarines, and bomber aircraft. Hyten also promoted the replacement program for the current ICBM system, meeting with Northrop Grumman last year to find ways to bring down the new version’s cost, a point of contention for critics. Reed’s other pick, Madelyn Creedon, is a former National Nuclear Security Administration official who now runs the Green Marble Group, a consulting firm for the “national security community with emphasis on nuclear, space, and countering weapons of mass destruction,” according to her LinkedIn profile.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., selected Robert Scher, a senior Defense Department official during the Obama administration who is now head of international affairs at BP. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., picked another high-ranking former Defense Department official, Frank Miller, a principal at the international business consultancy Scowcroft Group, where he “provides clients both strategic and tactical advice on defense, national security, foreign affairs, and intelligence policy,” according to the firm’s website.

The commission does include some skeptics of the current nuclear modernization track.

Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, chose Rebeccah Heinrichs and Marshall Billingslea, both senior fellows at the right-wing Hudson Institute, which is funded by Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and other defense contractors. In an article the Hudson Institute published in October, Heinrichs argued against the idea of a no-first-use or single-purpose nuclear weapons policy and pushed the hawkish view that supposed underinvestment in modernization weakens deterrence against nuclear use. Billingslea, meanwhile, was Trump’s arms control envoy in the State Department. In that role, he sought but failed to reach an agreement with Russia to extend the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or New START, which limits the number of deployed nuclear warheads and other systems. He argued for the U.S. to continue its status quo, stating in May 2020: “U.S. deterrent modernization goes hand-in-hand with arms control.”

The commission does include some skeptics of the current nuclear modernization track, like Leonor Tomero, the pick of House Armed Services Committee Chair Adam Smith, D-Wash. Tomero briefly served in Biden’s Defense Department overseeing nuclear deterrence policy, but her appointment led to a revolt from hawks and she was ultimately forced out in a reorganization.

In addition to Tomero, Smith appointed Rose Gottemoeller, chief negotiator of New START with Russia during the Obama administration, who’s now a lecturer in international security and cooperation at Stanford University. The appointee of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is former Defense Department official Gloria Duffy, an arms control advocate who worked in the 1990s to remove nuclear weapons from former Soviet nations, including Ukraine. Creedon, one of Reed’s picks, also pushed back on the Trump administration’s policy to expand the U.S.’s arsenal of low-yield nuclear weapons, arguing in an article for Arms Control Today that it could risk “nuclear war-fighting.”

The commission’s primary assignment is to release a final report later this year detailing its recommendations for U.S. nuclear policy. Given the group’s makeup, many in the arms control and disarmament community are skeptical that it will recommend any serious reduction to the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

“Having members like Leonor, Rose, Madelyn, and Gloria Duffy (Pelosi’s appointee) in the mix will be useful for including non-traditional thinking on the issues, but most of the other appointees are very establishment or explicitly pro-nukes/anti-arms control and that counterbalance will likely lead to a moderated document,” Monica Montgomery, advocacy coordinator for the Council for a Livable World, wrote in a statement to The Intercept.

“To me this seems like an effort to build bipartisan consensus around military posture at the highest, most general level,” wrote Emma Claire Foley of Global Zero to The Intercept. “Given the influence of the Russian invasion of Ukraine especially, we probably won’t see any substantial shift in the direction of reducing nuclear risk, and I imagine the results will support defense budget increases, as we’ve seen from the Biden administration for two years now.”

“This seems like an effort to build bipartisan consensus around military posture at the highest, most general level.”

The timing of the commission also means that whatever conclusions it does reach will likely have little impact on official U.S. nuclear weapons policy. When Congress last established this type of group, it did so early in the Obama administration so that its recommendations could influence the president’s Nuclear Posture Review. This time around, the commission is just getting started, while Biden’s nuclear strategy is all but complete, slated for imminent release.

Reed told The Intercept that the group will instead take a retroactive look at Biden’s Nuclear Posture Review, providing comments on “pluses and minuses, what more we could do, what are key issues that might have been overlooked.” In terms of impact, he said the commission will “inform policy decisions and budget decisions” and highlighted its importance in regard to Russia and China, stating: “We’re on the verge for the first time in the history of the world of having a trilateral nuclear competition.” (Researchers have found that Russia and the U.S. have comparable stockpiles — the former retains about 4,500 warheads while the latter has about 3,700. China has about 350, though the Pentagon has claimed that Beijing is rapidly expanding its arsenal.)

“If Congressional leaders were sincere about their stated desire to ‘examine the long-term strategic posture of the United States,’ they would hold a series of public hearings to do so,” Joe Cirincione, a nuclear nonproliferation advocate with the Quincy Institute, told The Intercept in a written statement. “There has not been a serious hearing with contrasting views on nuclear policy in Congress in decades.”

“So, it’s not a game changer,” he said of the commission. “The game is rigged.”

The post Congress Is Already Blowing a Key Chance to Reform Nuclear Weapons Policy appeared first on The Intercept.

“Russia, despite its military challenges with the invasion, still has a preponderance of conventional forces,” Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, told The Intercept. “Their formal military doctrine only allows for the potential use of nuclear weapons in two major circumstances: one in which Russia is attacked by a country like the United States with long-range strategic nuclear weapons, which would lead them to retaliate, or if there’s a military conflict that puts at risk the Russian state itself. Now, this conflict, while gruesome and brutal to the Ukrainians, does not represent a threat to the Russian state.”

But the risk is certainly greater than it was before the invasion, and the longer the war carries on, the more willing Putin may be to deviate from Russia’s standard operating procedure, Kimball said. A prolonged conflict, especially if Putin decides to use more destructive weapons and engage in reckless acts, like damaging the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, also carries the risk of drawing NATO in further, resulting in a broader European conflict in which Putin may come to fear a greater threat to Russia.

“It is hard to imagine a scenario that Putin would use a [nuclear] weapon in Ukraine unless he felt that he was losing and that the [loss] could result in his losing power (and possibly his life),” nuclear expert and Quincy Institute fellow Joe Cirincione wrote to The Intercept. “The possibility of losing the war rises dramatically if the US and NATO were to engage.”

Under President Joe Biden, the United States has tried to draw a fine line to avoid a full-blown war: The administration is currently supporting the Ukrainian resistance with light weapons like anti-tank Javelin missiles but rejecting dangerous calls to establish a no-fly zone, which would mean direct conflict with Russia, and requests to route Polish fighter jets to Ukraine through a NATO military base in Germany. But crucially, neither Russia nor the United States governs its nuclear arsenal with a no-first-use policy, which would take these weapons off the table in a conventional conflict.

According to Cirincione, much of the problem stems from Russia and the U.S. viewing nuclear weapons as “an extension” of conventional arms, meaning that they’re another type of munition that could be used on a battlefield. The outlook is made worse by both countries’ increased reliance on so-called low-yield munitions in their military strategies.

“Any nuclear weapon, regardless of yield, would have devastating humanitarian and environmental consequences and risk escalation to a ‘full-blown’ nuclear war.”

The term “low-yield” is a misnomer: This class of extremely destructive arms includes the 15- and 21-kiloton bombs that the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing hundreds of thousands of people either in the immediate impact or over the months of radiation sickness that ensued. But it does help distinguish those nuclear weapons from the most powerful, doomsday-style weapons like intercontinental ballistic missiles or the U.S.’s 1.2-megaton B83 gravity bomb. For reference, the U.S.’s smallest nuclear weapon, the B61 gravity bomb, has a 0.3-kiloton setting, the same amount of power as the 2020 ammonium nitrate explosion in Beirut that killed more than 200 people.

If Russia were to use a nuclear weapon in the event of a wider conflict with NATO, it’s widely assumed that Putin would start with a low-yield munition. Russia has an estimated 1,900 such weapons that rely on a variety of delivery methods — by air, ground, and sea. But there’s no guarantee that it would stop there.

“Any nuclear weapon, regardless of yield, would have devastating humanitarian and environmental consequences and risk escalation to a ‘full-blown’ nuclear war,” Monica Montgomery, a research analyst at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, told The Intercept.

Despite the dangers, some analysts believe that the U.S. should prepare its forces as if a limited nuclear war were winnable. The idea led former President Donald Trump to put the U.S. on a course to develop more low-yield nuclear weapons. The U.S. already had about 1,000 of these types of munitions.

“Expanding flexible U.S. nuclear options now, to include low-yield options, is important for the preservation of credible deterrence against regional aggression. It will raise the nuclear threshold and help ensure that potential adversaries perceive no possible advantage in limited nuclear escalation, making nuclear employment less likely,” Trump’s 2018 Nuclear Posture Review said, refuting concerns laid out by arms control advocates, who argue that the weapons’ smaller explosive power risks making their use more likely.

The review, a document each president since Bill Clinton has released to publicly declare their nuclear weapons strategy, also claimed that Russia is increasing its nonstrategic arms, referring to munitions with lower yields and shorter ranges that could be used in a nonnuclear conflict. Hans Kristensen at the Federation of American Scientists described this claim as “exaggerated” in a 2019 article for Forbes, arguing that Russia has actually been reducing its total numbers.

Nevertheless, the previous White House followed through on its plans by seeking a brand new nuclear-armed, sea-launched cruise missile and placing a low-yield warhead on some submarine-launched ballistic missiles. (It also decided to keep around the 1.2-megaton B83 gravity bomb, the largest in the U.S. nuclear arsenal, which the Obama administration had wanted to retire.)

Biden was slated to release his own Nuclear Posture Review early this year, though that has likely been delayed as a result of the war in Ukraine. Disarmament advocates hope that the president, who said on the campaign trail that the U.S. “does not need new nuclear weapons,” will reverse Trump’s course. But pressure to maintain the status quo is likely to grow now.

“If President Biden sheds or does away in any way with nuclear capabilities as has been reported, I predict bipartisan opposition in the House and Senate that will override it and continue to fund these systems,” Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., ranking member of the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee, said during a March 1 hearing on U.S. nuclear forces. In addition to Russia, he warned about nuclear militarization by China and North Korea.

“It’s going to be the same old, same old,” Rep. John Garamendi, D-Calif., a member of the panel, told The Intercept. “The Republicans on the Armed Services Committee and probably just generally cannot ever have enough nuclear weapons.”

By expanding the U.S. arsenal of low-yield nuclear weapons, the Trump administration forced arms control advocates to shift their focus. Years ago, Senate Democrats actively campaigned against a missile called the Long-Range Standoff weapon, intended to replace the U.S.’s aging air-launched cruise missile and its warhead, which has a range of yield settings, including a low-yield option. When asked by The Intercept about his stance on this category of weapons and his past opposition to the replacement, Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., instead called out the sea-launched weapons started under Trump: “It’s not only a waste of money, it’s destabilizing.”

Montgomery, of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, described the jockeying for priorities in the nuclear arms control arena as a battle for attention. The W76 warhead, “because of its uniquely destabilizing position on our strategic nuclear submarines, and the [sea-launched cruise missile] because of the lines that it blurs between conventional and nuclear use,” she said, “were chosen as higher priorities and also most likely to be able to oppose.”

While the public awaits Biden’s decisions on his nuclear arms policies, including whether to adopt a no-first-use stance, the dangers of nuclear weapons abound, even outside the context of Ukraine. The Wall Street Journal reported this week that North Korea recently tested components of a new intercontinental ballistic missile system, and nuclear-armed India said Friday that it accidentally fired a missile into neighboring Pakistan.

“Over the past decade, both Russia and the US have gone back to doctrines developed in the 1950’s that envision fighting with low-yield nuclear weapon[s] on the battlefield,” Cirincione wrote to The Intercept. “Once again, both countries are developing and fielding weapons they believe are ‘more usable,’ that would convince political leaders that they could cross the nuclear threshold and not risk escalation to global thermonuclear war. This is a dangerous illusion.”

The post How Does a Conventional War Become Nuclear? appeared first on The Intercept.

“President Biden has long spoken against forced arbitration clauses in employment contracts and today marks an important milestone in empowering survivors of sexual assault and sexual harassment and protecting employee rights,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said during a press briefing Thursday. She notably did not mention such predatory clauses in consumer agreements, which Democratic advocates are striving to ban too.

Upon signing the legislation, Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris called for an end to forced arbitration writ large. “I think it’s all wrong,” Biden said of mandatory arbitration clauses. “Giving the employer absolute power to decide isn’t how justice is supposed to work.”

Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., first teamed up to introduce an early version of what’s now called the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act during the height of the #MeToo movement in December 2017. The measure languished under a GOP-controlled Senate and White House but finally passed in February.

The new law faced some dissent from Republicans: House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, himself accused of ignoring sexual abuse on the Ohio State University wrestling team, laundered Chamber of Commerce talking points and dubiously argued on the House floor that litigation can be longer, costlier, and more traumatic than arbitration before voting no. Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, who has spoken publicly about experiencing sexual harassment while serving in the U.S. military, sought to undermine the bill by crafting a watered-down alternative that the Chamber could stomach.

Despite opposition from Jordan and some of his colleagues, the majority of Republicans in the House of Representatives ultimately joined all Democrats to vote in favor of the reform on February 7, and the following day, it passed the Senate in a voice vote without any objections, including from Ernst. Pending a challenge in the courts, clauses in employee contracts mandating the use of arbitration to resolve sexual assault and harassment-related workplace conflicts will be unenforceable, effectively banning them.

The new law is a victory for employee rights, as well as for advocates hoping to loosen the hold that special interests have over Congress, but it’s a modest reform. Pre-dispute forced arbitration agreements still constrain workers who are seeking adjudication of discrimination on the basis of race, sexual orientation, and other types of claims. They also pervade contracts between seniors and nursing homes, individuals and their financial advisers, military troops and employers, borrowers and lenders, and more. Oftentimes, these clauses are accompanied by restrictions on class action lawsuits as well.

According to a study from the American Association of Justice, forced consumer and employment arbitrations jumped in 2020 — and only 4 percent of claimants won monetary awards. Some corporate giants see more of these cases than others: One in three employment-based cases was filed against Family Dollar or its owner Dollar Tree alone.

Lawmakers could protect workers from forced arbitration in these cases by passing more sweeping legislation, like the Forced Arbitration Injustice Repeal, or FAIR, Act, which seeks to bar these clauses more broadly. Democrats first introduced the bill in 2017, and it passed the House in 2018, but it didn’t have the support of a Republican-led Senate to leave the Judiciary Committee. Though Biden and Harris called on Congress to pass the FAIR Act during Thursday’s signing ceremony, it still faces significant opposition, as do two other consumer-focused bills that could reform the law incrementally.

“Powerful business interests in Washington lobby very hard against legislation that changes this forced arbitration and they’re very successful oftentimes in killing good bills,” Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., the only Republican co-sponsor of the comprehensive reform in either the House or Senate who himself has been accused of sex trafficking, told The Intercept on February 7, specifically acknowledging the Chamber’s influence.

Members of Congress could ban most arbitration mandates by passing the FAIR Act, but they appear unlikely to earn the bipartisan support required to do so. Even Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., one of eight Republican House co-sponsors of the sexual assault-targeted bill, told The Intercept he does not support eliminating mandatory arbitration completely.

Sexual assault and harassment “really is something where this particular group of individuals have suffered greatly,” Buck said, though he acknowledged that he would be open to similar one-off legislation to ban these clauses in certain workplace disputes. “I do think that there are issues like racial discrimination that would rise to the level of eliminating mandatory arbitration, but most others I really would have to look at on a case-by-case basis,” he told The Intercept on February 11, adding that he has not spoken to his GOP colleagues about the idea.

Spokespersons for the seven other House Republican co-sponsors of the sexual assault-targeted legislation did not respond to emailed questions about whether their bosses back the FAIR Act. And a number of Senate Republicans who were particularly outspoken in support of the narrow legislation told The Intercept they hadn’t reviewed the FAIR Act, including Graham, who co-sponsored the bill with Gillibrand. Some, like Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., explicitly closed the door to supporting other forced arbitration reforms at this time.

Nevertheless, Gillibrand is optimistic.

“All the other kinds of discrimination [have] had less visibility,” she told The Intercept. “Once you have this to expose how much harassment is going on in the workplace, I think you will be able to continue to amend the law to protect all plaintiffs.”

Democrats have already introduced some single issue-focused measures that have been unsuccessful in the past but could ride on the coattails of Gillibrand’s bill: Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., with the support of Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Guy Reschenthaler, has sponsored the Justice for Servicemembers Act, which would effectively nullify forced arbitration clauses in employment contracts that prey on troops and reservists who have to suddenly depart for active duty.

Rep. Linda Sánchez, D-Calif., also has the Fairness in Nursing Home Arbitration Act to protect elders in long-term care facilities. Additionally, Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., and Rep. Bill Foster, D-Ill., have introduced the Investor Choice Act, which would ban investment advisers and broker-dealers from mandating arbitration with clients. Currently, claimants against the latter can seek recourse at the Financial Industry Regulatory Agency, or FINRA, which provides an industry subsidized arbitration forum. But investment advisers, which are becoming more frequent, are not regulated by FINRA, so their clients often have no choice but to resolve complaints at cost-forbidding private forums.

No Republicans have co-sponsored these two single-issue bills; consumer rights measures may go too far for conservatives compared to workplace and troop protection. Gretchen Carlson’s influential nonprofit Lift Our Voices, which played a pivotal role advocating for the sexual assault-focused bill, is continuing its fight against forced arbitration clauses and nondisclosure agreements in workplace conflicts — but not in consumer disputes.

The Chamber over the past year has also spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions, to send dozens of lobbyists to undermine the FAIR Act and narrower bills, in addition to the Ending Forced Arbitration in Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act. Major corporations have independently paid lobbyists to hinder the broad FAIR Act as well, including AT&T, whose 2011 Supreme Court case opened the floodgates for businesses to insert these clauses into contracts and obstruct access to transparent trials.

“The broader the prohibition against forced arbitration, the [more] difficult it is to defeat the armies of lobbyists and lawyers,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., original sponsor of the FAIR Act, told The Intercept in February. Big corporations may view reform for sexual assault cases as a no-brainer, but once tort claims and unemployment discrimination come into play, “Woah, that hurts our bottom line,” he said, mimicking business owner fears about restoring public justice to workers and consumers.

However, employee and consumer rights advocates like Joanne Doroshow, executive director at New York Law School’s Center for Justice & Democracy, share Gillibrand’s optimism. “This first bill was the first crack in the forced arbitration wall,” she told The Intercept in an email. “Now, other efforts get easier and easier. How can corporate lobbyists continue to argue with a straight face that forced arbitration clauses are good for the American public, in fact so great that for their own good, people must be forced to agree to them?”

Update: March 3, 2022, 6:16 p.m. ET

This story has been updated to reflect that Biden signed the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act into law and include comments from the signing ceremony.

The post Biden Signs Law Banning Forced Arbitration — but Only Over Sexual Misconduct appeared first on The Intercept.

Take Denmark’s Maersk, the second largest ocean carrier in the world, which last month posted $18 billion in net profits in 2021, compared to $2.9 billion in 2020. There’s also France’s CMA CGM, the third largest shipping firm, which reported a one-quarter net income of $5.6 billion in November 2021, compared to $570 million the previous year. (The largest ocean carrier in the world, Switzerland’s Mediterranean Shipping Company, is private and doesn’t release its financial results.) The results have been so stunning that the British market research company Drewry updated its estimate of the highly consolidated industry’s total 2021 operating profits, raising its forecast from $150 billion in October to $190 billion in December. It anticipates the figure will hit $200 billion in 2022.

“See what’s happening with ocean carriers moving goods in and out of America. During the pandemic, about half a dozen or less foreign-owned companies raised prices by as much as 1,000 percent and made record profits,” Biden said Tuesday night. “Tonight I’m announcing a crackdown on those companies overcharging American businesses and consumers.” He received a standing ovation from the Democratic caucus, as Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg nodded along.

In a statement released February 28, the White House especially criticized foreign carriers for charging importers and exporters higher fees when their containers remain stuck at ports due to congestion, as well as their refusal to transport American agricultural products. The administration’s fact sheet said that the Justice Department would provide antitrust attorneys to the Federal Maritime Commission, or FMC, and called on Congress to pass reform to address regulatory immunity.

But the root of the problem isn’t simply that greedy foreign logistics firms prey on American traders and buyers, however convenient that narrative may be to sell the administration’s response. Since 1998, the U.S. has emboldened global shipping companies to consolidate market power, raise prices, and neglect operational resiliency — as exemplified last spring when an oversized container ship got lodged in the Suez Canal. With the 1998 Ocean Shipping Reform Act, Congress permitted carriers to make confidential deals with their customers while preserving an antitrust waiver the government had given them decades before in exchange for regulating them as public utilities. Now, three shipping alliances control 80 percent of the global market, compared to 30 percent in 2011.

With overwhelming bipartisan support, the House has already twice passed Reps. John Garamendi, D-Calif., and Dusty Johnson, R-S.D.’s Ocean Shipping Reform Act, which shares a name with the 1998 law but effectively seeks the opposite, most recently as an amendment to a major anti-China economic and military bill last month. They will have to reconcile it with a slightly different shipping reform bill offered in the Senate by Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and John Thune, R-S.D.

The Senate has not yet passed its version, but Klobuchar confirmed last month that she’d like to use the broader anti-China legislation, which both chambers have now passed, as a vehicle to get the shipping reform into law. “I’m excited that we’re finally moving forward on this; consumers deserve better,” she told The Intercept. “We were working on this before we knew about the record profits made by the shipping industry.”

Both bills shift the burden of proof onto shipping companies over how reasonable port fees are, but the key difference between the two reforms comes down to how they deal with carriers refusing to transport agricultural products. The House legislation outright bans shipping companies from denying services, while the watered-down Senate version leaves regulatory decisions in the hands of the FMC.

“On the West Coast, rice, almonds, wine, all of the other commodities, some of which are perishable, like fresh pork. … They got to get them on the ships and get them out, but the containers are headed back to China and other points in the Western Pacific empty, because those exporters from basically China are willing to pay 5, 10, maybe even more times than the American exporters would normally be paying for that container,” Garamendi told The Intercept in November when the House bill was first introduced.

“The reality is that you shouldn’t be allowed to do this,” Johnson added. “If you’re using American ports, you should be required to play by some very basic rules of the road, and American soybean farmers, pork producers, they just cannot understand — frankly manufacturers, exporters — just can’t understand how these ocean carriers have consolidated so much power.”

The legislation is certain to please the highly monopolized, environmentally destructive U.S. agricultural industry, but even advocates for small farms, which mostly do not export, are defending it.

For example, Joe Maxwell, former lieutenant governor of Missouri and the co-founder of the Family Farm Action Alliance, which advocates for a competitive agriculture industry for small businesses, told The Intercept he’s generally supportive of Biden flexing the government’s antitrust authorities following decades of entrenched, free-market thinking in regulatory agencies. And Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., an opponent of Big Ag, has signed on as a co-sponsor of Klobuchar and Thune’s bill. Still, Maxwell argued the bill doesn’t go far enough to break up the concentrated shipping industry, which the few small farms that do export have less power to exert pressure on than large agricultural companies.

In addition to ocean carriers, Democrats are trying to restrain consolidation in the farming industry. In Congress, Booker and Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., have sponsored the Farm System Reform Act to target meatpackers and factory farms. Biden’s antitrust executive order last July also targeted this sector, and he gave airtime to the issue during his state of the union speech last night, suggesting there could be momentum to push back. “Small businesses and family farmers and ranchers, I need not tell some of my Republican friends from those states, guess what, you’ve got four basic meatpacking facilities,” Biden said. “That’s it. You play with them or you don’t get to play at all, and you pay a hell of a lot more.”

The post Biden Announces “Crackdown” on Profiteering Shipping Cartels to Fight Inflation appeared first on The Intercept.

Now that Russia has invaded Ukraine in what could amount to the worst conflict in Europe since World War II, the prognosis looks even more grim, and the urgency for prudence much greater. Russia is armed with a trove of nuclear weapons, spreading fear to concerned observers about the prospect of an escalation involving the most destructive arms on the planet. During a televised address Wednesday night, Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a stark warning that anyone who interferes “will face consequences greater than any you have faced in history” — which some experts have interpreted as a reference to nuclear weapons. Allen Hester of the Friends Committee on National Legislation told The Intercept on Thursday that Russia is “very much using their nuclear arsenal as a shield to pursue conventional warfare in the region,” adding that it’s crucial nevertheless to keep the lines of communication open.

There will now likely be heightened pressure on Biden, who is yet to approve his final nuclear weapons strategy, to continue Trump’s expansionist course. Stephen Young of the Union of Concerned Scientists warned that hawks in the administration will try to convince Biden to keep the cruise missile and gravity bomb that his predecessor endorsed. “People will see it, they will claim it’s a sign of weakness if the U.S. cancels anything right now,” he told The Intercept. Hester said Biden may also be less willing to adopt a “no first use” policy, especially if fearful European allies, who’ve already lobbied against it, urge Biden again not to make major reforms. And, in what Hester described as a worst-case scenario, the president could decide to increase spending on cyber operations and other non-nuclear capabilities, then frame the relative change as a reduction in nuclear weapon reliance without cutting the arsenal at all.

“If Biden issues the NPR the Pentagon wrote, he will not just be accepting obsolete Cold War doctrines and weapons, he will be blessing them.”

Biden will weigh his options as he considers the draft Nuclear Posture Review that, prior to the crisis in Ukraine, was expected early this year. The NPR is a public document that each president since Bill Clinton has released to declare their policy on nuclear weapons. According to Hester, the draft is currently sitting on the president’s desk awaiting approval and any changes that he may deem necessary. Young said Defense Department officials have told him that the strategy’s rollout will be delayed until after the crisis in Ukraine settles. The White House and Pentagon did not reply to requests for comment.

Nuclear policy expert Joe Cirincione of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft told The Intercept that the war on Ukraine, and Americans’ tendency to immediately react by “bringing down the hammer,” shows why Biden should pull back his NPR and consider a more restrained approach. He especially warned about the administration repackaging the same old maximalist policies under new lingo like “integrated deterrence” that can “create a slipper[y] slope where conventional conflict can escalate quickly and seamlessly to cyber war and nuclear war.”

“It is completely inadequate for the task ahead of us,” Cirincione said of the draft review, arguing: “If Biden issues the NPR the Pentagon wrote, he will not just be accepting obsolete Cold War doctrines and weapons, he will be blessing them. All his officials will be required to embrace these weapons and strategies as the Democratic view. Members of Congress will be kneecapped, unable to oppose these new weapons no matter what the cost.”

Skeptics of nuclear weapons are already at a disadvantage. In 2010, after President Barack Obama successfully negotiated the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty to limit the number of deployed ICBMs and other weapons, disarmament activists hoped that he would continue his 2009 pledge “to seek the peace and the security of a world without nuclear weapons.” But according to Cirincione, Obama faced so much wrath from Republicans and the nuclear-industrial complex, as well as a demanding Putin, that he turned away from plans to reduce arms further and allowed research for a new ICBM program, known as the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent, to proceed. The weapon, whose development was greenlighted in the final months of Trump’s presidency, is slated to cost $264 billion through 2075 and begin replacing the current system in the late 2020s.

Similar forces have come for Biden. Last year, for example, the White House had selected Leonor Tomero, a longtime congressional staffer known for questioning excessive weapons buildup, to oversee the NPR, leading to a revolt by the defense establishment. In the Senate, Nebraska Republican Deb Fischer reportedly threatened to obstruct confirmations of nominees if Tomero stayed. The Department of Defense eliminated her position in September, calling the move a reorganization.

Another impediment to restraint arises from claims that nuclear weapon programs result in jobs and economic development in some lawmakers’ home states. Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., who has outsize influence over the military budget as chair of the Appropriations Committee’s defense panel, has reiterated his support for the new ICBM system, which will partially be based in Montana. (Nonproliferation advocates like Global Zero’s Emma Claire Foley argue that the public could be better served by directing the new weapon’s funds toward programs like Medicare expansion.)

And the two most powerful Republicans on the Senate and House Armed Services committees — Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., and Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala. — have sought to shut down assessment of whether the new weapon system is necessary. Last month the two criticized the Defense Department for contracting with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to assess whether the current ICBM system, known as the Minuteman III, could remain viable as an alternative to its replacement. Rogers spokesperson Justine Sanders told Bloomberg that the review was redundant because the Obama administration had already examined other options, a common argument that proponents of the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent use. But that prior assessment, which is classified, was likely grounded in assumptions that the size of the force and deterrence needs would not change, Matt Korda of the Federation of American Scientists told The Intercept.

The contract began with the premise that the U.S. would continue to have an ICBM force rather than consider the possibility of eliminating the missiles, James Acton, co-director of Carnegie’s nuclear policy program, told The Intercept. ICBMs carry “inherent risks in a crisis in the sense that because [leaders] have a ‘use them or lose them’ mentality around these weapons, because they’re framed as sitting ducks, essentially, in the event of a nuclear war, the pressure on the president to use them in a crisis is very high,” Hester explained.

The weapons also serve as “nuclear sponges,” meaning that “they’re there to absorb the enemy’s nuclear missiles and sacrifice those communities in the Midwest who house these missiles in the name of saving … larger-population coastal cities,” he added.

“They’re there to absorb the enemy’s nuclear missiles and sacrifice those communities in the Midwest who house these missiles in the name of saving … larger-population coastal cities.”

Despite resistance from Inhofe and Rogers, the Carnegie study was nowhere near the thorough technical evaluation sought by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and 19 other Democratic lawmakers last year. According to Acton, it was never meant to be: “Our study was entirely unclassified, and precisely because the NPR is coming out relatively soon, it was also a fairly short study. So our study was not, could not be, it was never intended to be a detailed, technically informed feasibility assessment of different options.”

Politico reported last month that the Biden administration decided to ignore the 20 Democrats’ request for an in-depth analysis of whether the Minuteman III could continue serving into the future. The Intercept has also learned that the Pentagon appears to have used a bogus excuse to justify why it didn’t seek out such an evaluation.

During one of Carnegie’s virtual workshops, held January 6, a Biden political appointee claimed that JASON, the Pentagon’s go-to independent scientific advisory group, had neither the time nor contracting mechanism to conduct the requested analysis, attendee Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, told The Intercept. He said the appointee, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Richard Johnson, was speaking from prepared remarks — suggesting that the justification came from more senior policymakers. The Defense Department declined to comment on Johnson’s remarks.

An email sent after the workshop and shared with The Intercept suggests that Johnson’s claim was untrue. According to the email, his comments prompted another attendee to email Ellen Williams, the chair of JASON and a physics professor at the University of Maryland, to ask whether the group had the capacity to conduct the evaluation. Williams replied that JASON indeed had the contracting means in place. The name of the original sender was redacted, but Kimball referred to him as a former member of the Obama administration.

“The Nuclear Posture Review, by going ahead with the ICBM without doing studies, contributes to this sort of mindless nuclear buildup without thoughts about where it leads.”

“JASON does and has had mechanisms to contract with DoD – for instance we did studies for DOD [acquisition and sustainment office] both of the last two summers, and are now discussing topics for next summer with DOD [research and engineering office],” Williams wrote in her reply. “I don’t recall any conversation with them about a study, and don’t know when or whether they might have been in touch with us.” She did not respond to a request for comment from The Intercept.

Gordon Long, JASON program office director at the Mitre Corp., which manages the group, declined to say whether the organization discussed the possibility of an ICBM review with the Pentagon. However, he told The Intercept in an email that Mitre has a contract with the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense to provide JASON with logistical support that the Pentagon can use to order studies.

The absence of the in-depth technical assessment calls into question the completion of the draft nuclear strategy, which was already concerning to nonproliferation experts. “The Nuclear Posture Review, by going ahead with the ICBM without doing studies, contributes to this sort of mindless nuclear buildup without thoughts about where it leads,” Cirincione said. “It’s not balanced by an equally strong, you might say, disarmament plan that talks about how we get out of this — and without that, you’re basically throwing nuclear fuel on the fire.”

The post Russia’s Ukraine War Heightens Urgency Around Biden’s Nuclear Weapons Strategy appeared first on The Intercept.

Last month, Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., introduced legislation to give Ukraine $500 million for arms purchases and impose what he’s called the “mother of all sanctions” on Russia if it invades. The bill mandates a number of reports on U.S. defense equipment transfers and Russian intelligence threats as well as the expansion of American news propaganda. But it makes no mention of reports to oversee whether U.S weapons go to white supremacists like the Azov Battalion, a unit in the Ukrainian National Guard with ties to the country’s far-right, ultranationalist National Corps party and Azov movement. Last year, Rep. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., called on Secretary of State Antony Blinken to label the Azov Battalion a foreign terrorist organization, saying it “uses the internet to recruit new members and then radicalizes them to use violence to pursue its white identity political agenda.”

The issue was not on Menendez’s radar Wednesday. “That’s a level of detail I’m not sure [about],” he told The Intercept when asked if his bill includes monitoring provisions. By Friday morning, bipartisan talks for a joint sanctions and weapons bill had broken down, frustrating members of Congress who seek to assert themselves into the foreign policymaking process narrowing the White House’s diplomatic tool set if Russia invades. Menendez, whose bill remains on the table, told reporters Wednesday that his door is still open to Republicans to come up with legislation together. Meanwhile, Ukraine has already received tons of ammunition and weapons from the U.S.

Menendez is the Democrats’ most powerful foreign policymaker in the Senate, and his stance appears to reflect the dominant mood in Washington. Russia issued a statement Thursday saying that the U.S. has not provided security guarantees in response to a draft treaty, and the U.S. alleged that Russia lied about withdrawing troops from the Ukrainian border. Menendez’s pursuit of mandatory sanctions on Russia and weapons funding for Ukraine is in line with the foreign policy establishment’s hawkish posture.

And Menendez isn’t the only member of Congress who appears unconcerned that U.S.-funded weapons could fall into the wrong hands. “I’m not considering any of that right now,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on Europe and regional security cooperation.

Connecticut Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, told The Intercept that the U.S. “should certainly monitor and scrutinize the way those arms or weapons are used.” However, “our main goal is to aid the Ukrainians in their defense.”

Past reporting shows that the U.S. doesn’t have sufficient procedures in place to track where its arms are going and prevent them from ending up with extremists. What’s known as the “Leahy vetting” process is supposed to certify whether foreign forces have committed “gross human rights violations” before greenlighting U.S. government support. But that proved ineffective in making sure that neo-Nazis in the Azov Battalion weren’t receiving U.S. training, the Daily Beast reported in 2015.

Congress has also passed measures, signed into law repeatedly since 2018, forbidding funds from going to arms and training for the Azov Battalion. Last year, the House of Representatives passed a defense bill that included an amendment sponsored by Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., to vet forces receiving U.S. military assistance for violent ideologies, “including those that are white identity terrorist, anti-semitic, or islamophobic.” But when the bill reached the Senate, Tlaib’s amendment was stripped from the final version during negotiations. Meanwhile, Ukrainian-American researcher Oleksiy Kuzmenko reported in September that officers belonging to an informal right-wing group called Military Order Centuria, which has ties to the international Azov movement, have trained at a Western-backed military institution.

Menendez and Shaheen appeared unaware of past failures to enforce the law against funding the Azov Battalion.

“I think that any of our arms sales always have conditions, or even our arms transfers have conditions, and so I’m sure the [Defense Department] would have conditions to make sure that they are headed to Ukrainian armed forces, not to others,” Menendez said.

“But there’s always a risk if you have an invasion and others take over, there’s always a risk that anywhere in the world that arms can be used by someone else,” he added, despite evidence that neo-Nazis already exist in the Ukrainian military.

Shaheen, for her part, said that she’s not considering provisions to keep an eye on arms because “the administration has already approved weapons to Ukraine.”

Meanwhile, as Senate Democrats and Republicans debate a strategy toward Eastern Europe moving forward, Ukraine has already received from Lithuania Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, the small, lightweight weapons that the U.S. famously armed the mujahideen with during the 1980s war in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union.

The post Neo-Nazis Not Top of Mind for Senate Democrats Pushing Weapons for Ukraine appeared first on The Intercept.